The 1960s stock market recovery revived academic and public interest in finance

Evidence

The Wall Street crash, the Great Depression, and World War II had left U.S. financial markets focused largely on bonds, especially government war debt.’ However, as investors became more confident that the postwar prosperity would continue, stocks began to seem attractive. Stock prices rose markedly in the 1950s, and in February 1966 the DowJones industrial average reached, albeit briefly, the unprecedented level of 1,000 (Brooks 1973, pp. 102-103). The “blue chip” corporations that traditionally made up the Dow had to jostle for attention with alluring high-technology corporations such as Xerox, Polaroid, Litton Industries, Ling-Temco-Vought, and perhaps most strikingly of allH. Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems. Investment, Wall Street, the financial markets in the 1960s, all these were once again interesting, even exciting. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 330

Categorization

• XREF: Historical context for why finance scholarship flourished — links to financialization literature on the postwar recovery of equity markets. — connects to: In mid-century US academia, the stock market was a low-prestige research topic. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 201; Finance theory’s rise depended on markets regaining prestige after 1929. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 36; Economic theory helped restore legitimacy to banned financial derivatives — Donald MacKenzie & Yuval Millo, Constructing a Market, Performing Theory, 9

Broader Connections

• Economic theory helped restore legitimacy to banned financial derivatives #corroborates (0.75) — Donald MacKenzie & Yuval Millo, Constructing a Market, Performing Theory, 9