----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- The following does not directly answer David Zimmerman's question, but it may provide some useful additional hints. The 19th century (especially after 1845) has known a rather large corpus of popular publications on financial investing, which--in the US as well as in England and France--defined itself as a popular "science of financial markets." Not only that it defined itself as science, but it aimed at elaborating a systematic financial science accessible by a larger public. This corpus of literature dealt (among others) with the problem of investor psychology and financial panics and very actively sought to provide cognitive antidotes against panic, to elaborate psychological theories of investing and to combine them with economic theories of financial markets. Those working on the topic may be interested in my modest contributions, listed below, which approach the problem from the viewpoint of the sociologist of knowledge and science: 1. Alex Preda: The Rise of the Popular Investor: Financial Knowledge and Investing in England and France, 1840-1880. Pp. 205-232 in The Sociological Quarterly 2001, 42/2. 2. Alex Preda: Financial Knowledge and the "Science of the Market" in England and France in the 19th Century. Pp. 205-229 in Facts and Figures. Economic Rerpesentations and Practices, ed. by Herbert Kalthoff, Richard Rottenburg and Hans-Juergen Wagener, Marburg 2000: Metropolis. Sincerely, Alex Preda Dept. of Sociology University of Bielefeld, Germany ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]