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This article focuses on the conflicts over market access rules on the two primary Italian stock exchanges, Milan and Genoa. These conflicts disrupted the quality of information produced by the two markets. Official brokers aimed to defend their monopoly on brokerage and capture rents by limiting market access. Banks wanted wider access so as to avoid paying these rents, create an opaque market and maximize the benefit from their informational advantage. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Milan Exchange implemented a transparent market organization while the Genoa Exchange remained opaque, creating a complementarity between them which fostered the development of the securities market overall. When in 1907 a violent crisis erupted in the dominant Genoa Exchange, legislation was adopted to harmonize the organization of the Italian exchanges.

Financial markets derive their political and societal legitimacy from their ability to produce fair and accurate prices. However, reviewing the literature on how stock exchanges price securities, we find an inherent tension between market organization and price disclosure, which is borne out by this special issue's historical case studies.

Cet article parcourt les etapes principales de la finance et du commerce en Mediterranee a la Renaissance en suivant le fil rouge de l'activite internationale des principales villes italiennes : Florence, Genes et Venise. La finance internationale europeenne trouve probablement ses origines dans les activites exercees pour le compte des Etats Pontificaux des le xie siecle. Le monde islamique etait, a l'aube de cette « revolution papale », le centre de la Mediterranee. Pourtant, la finance islamique ne s'est pas imposee dans la Mediterranee, probablement car elle n'a pas su ou voulu trop depasser les limites que la religion lui imposait. Si le xive siecle a ete marque par la banque florentine, au xve siecle venitien a succede le xvie siecle de la finance genoise. Les dynamiques qui ont lie ces villes aux rivages de la Mediterranee ont donne naissance au capitalisme, notamment financier. Les grandes decouvertes et particulierement le voyage de Vasco de Gama vers les Indes en contournant le cap de Bonne Esperance creent les conditions pour le declin futur de la Mediterranee.Classification JEL : N10, N13, N17, N23.

International audience This paper reports results from the design phase of EurHisFirm. Its goal is to integrate isolated and badly accessible financial data sets on 19 th and 20 th century European companies so that users can query the data as if they reside in one large database. In addition, it wants to stimulate database construction by providing not only methodology and tools to connect to and collaborate with existing ones, but also a collaborative platform, based on machine learning and artificial intelligence, that allows harvesting data in a semi-automatic way. We present the proof-of-concept results of this platform in addition to the performance of matching algorithms, which are necessary to connect and collate the different constituent databases as well as to connect them to contemporary commercial databases.

International audience; Despite France's importance in the interwar world economy, the scale of the French banking crises of 1930–1 and their consequences have never been fully assessed quantitatively. The lack of banking regulation severely limited the availability of balance sheet data. Using a new dataset of individual balance sheets from more than 300 banks, this article shows that the crises were much more severe than previously thought, although they did not affect the main commercial banks. By reconstructing financial flows, this study shows that the fall in bank credit was mostly driven by a flight‐to‐safety by deposits, from banks to savings institutions and the central bank. The decrease in bank deposits due to bank runs was offset by an increase in deposits with savings institutions, with the central bank, and in cash hoarding, whereas the decrease in bank credit was not offset by an increase in loans from non‐bank financial institutions. In line with the gold standard mentality, cash deposited with savings institutions and the central bank was used to decrease marketable public debt and increase gold reserves, rather than pursuing countercyclical policies. Despite massive capital inflows and rising aggregate money supply, France suffered from a severe, persistent credit crunch.

Cet article vise a jeter les bases d’une histoire comparee des places boursieres francaises. Il montre que la geographie des marches financiers demeure relativement stable entre 1871 et 1913 : si l’on se fonde sur le nombre d’entreprises domestiques cotees, le developpement de Paris ne s’est en effet pas fait au detriment des bourses regionales, au sein desquelles Lyon acquiert un role preponderant en doublant son poids a la fois sur les plans national et regional. La relative stabilite des relations entre Paris et la province et l’essor lyonnais sont le resultat d’une dynamique institutionnelle faconnee par les relations de concurrence entre places et les changements dans la regulation des bourses. Cette dynamique empeche la centralisation des emetteurs sur le marche dominant, la Bourse de Paris, comme predit par la litterature theorique dominante.

International audience; Aujourd’hui, la recherche s’appuie sur des méthodes innovantes de production, de traitement et d’analyse des données massives, ainsi que sur le développement de solutions originales pour l’extraction de connaissances innovantes. La production de données historiques doit se fonder sur une collaboration ouverte et pluridimensionnelle entre chercheurs et archivistes. Le Service des Archives des ministères économiques et financiers (SAEF) conserve le fonds de la Compagnie des Agents de Change de Paris. Ce fonds d’archives est la source première de l’Équipement d’Excellence « Données financières historiques » (Equipex DFIH), financé par le gouvernement français dans le cadre du Programme Investissements d’Avenir. Dirigé par Pierre-Cyrille Hautcœur (EHESS et École d’Économie de Paris) et supervisé par Angelo Riva (European Business School - Paris et École d’Économie de Paris), ce projet vise à construire une base de données financières de long terme relative aux titres négociés sur la place de Paris et à leurs émetteurs. La construction de cette base de données aurait été impossible sans la collaboration étroite qui s’est établie entre l’Equipex DFIH et le SAEF. L’expérience de l’Equipex DFIH a permis la constitution d’un consortium européen, coordonné par Angelo Riva, de onze institutions de sept pays qui a soumis le projet EURHISFIRM dans le cadre du programme H2020 Infrastructure Development. Lauréat, EURHISFIRM vise à mettre en place une infrastructure pour connecter, collecter, rassembler, aligner et partager des données détaillées, fiables et normalisées et sur une longue période sur les entreprises européennes.

This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 645763. Contrary to what law and finance theory would predict, the Paris Bourse was highly liquid at the turn of the 20th century: the traded volumes amounted to four times the French GDP. This magnitude was mainly due to forward trading. The Bourse had developed as a forward market, despite a ban on forward transactions. The official stockbrokers played a key role in legitimizing and legalizing these operations, previously equated with gambling. The 1885 legalizing act initiated a new field of law and made possible further regulatory changes that paved the way for the heyday of the Paris Bourse.

We discuss anomalous gas production data observed downdip of oil production in a thick oil reservoir. At the onset of production, the wells under consideration exhibited a sharp rise of the GOR with large disparity between estimated gas in solution and actual gas production. This was followed by a declining GOR period. After declining, the GOR rose and then fell off again in one of the wells. Such a behavior leaves little doubt that free gas exists. The reservoir pressure is approx. 20 bars above the bubble point, so these observations contrast with the general assumption that gas below the gas/oil contact must be in solution in the oil. The fact that free gas comes in peaks suggests the presence of large bubbles suspended in the oil at variable distances from wells. In order to understand how long a gas bubble can live in undersaturated oil and the conditions under which it can be mobilized, we analyze the system in terms of gravity-capillary-viscous force equilibria and investigate the kinetics of gas diffusion into the oil. We show that bubbles that are sufficiently large in width (hundreds of meters) and sufficiently small in thickness (a few meters) can move horizontally but not vertically (meaning that they remain suspended in the oil and are producible) and take hundreds of thousands of years to dissolve into the oil. The presence of these bubbles is compatible with the available geochemical data, which provide evidences that the source rock of gas is more mature than that of oil and probably still in the generation and expulsion phase. This unusual non-equilibrium situation was reproduced by means of 3D simulation approach, to confirm the conceptual model adopted.

Despite France's importance in the interwar world economy, the scale and consequences of the French banking crises of 1930–1931 were never assessed quantitatively due to lack of data in the absence of banking regulation. Using a new dataset of individual balance sheets from more than 400 banks, Patrice Baubeau, Eric Monnet, Angelo Riva & Stefano Ungaro show that the crisis was more severe and occurred earlier than previously thought, and it was very asymmetric, without affecting main commercial banks. The primary transmission channel was a flight-to-safety of deposits from banks to savings institutions and the central bank, leading to a major, persistent disruption in business lending. In line with the gold standard mentality, cash deposited with savings institutions and the central bank was used to decrease marketable public debt and increase gold reserves, rather than pursue countercyclical policies. Despite massive capital inflows, France suffered from a severe, persistent credit crunch.

Dans cet article, nous montrons que les scandales financiers sont un facteur explicatif cle du « retard » francais dans l’adoption d’une reglementation bancaire. Les scandales financiers, dont la presse s’est emparee, ont attire l’attention de l’opinion et des pouvoirs publics sur la protection de l’epargne investie en titres, plutot que sur celle deposee sur des comptes bancaires. Or ces scandales ont provoque des faillites retentissantes pour les intermediaires financiers engages dans l’emission et le placement de titres, plutot que dans des activites de collecte de depots et d’octroi de credits realisees par les banques a reseaux. La forte diminution des depots et des credits au sein de ces dernieres n’a en revanche pas souleve de grands debats : d’une part, l’absence de statistiques publiques consolidees a cache l’ampleur du phenomene ; d’autre part, cette diminution des depots n’a pas resulte des pertes des deposants, mais d’une fuite des depots vers la securite representee par les caisses d’epargne. Ainsi, lors des debats sur les faillites et difficultes financieres, les enjeux principaux furent les pertes subies par les epargnants acquereurs de titres de placement et les lacunes dans la reglementation des societes par actions. Meme en cas de faillite d’une banque a reseaux, les debats porterent sur le comportement imprudent d’administrateurs aventureux, au detriment et a l’insu de leurs actionnaires et deposants. Des lois de 1930 aux decrets de 1935, le Parlement et les gouvernements ont ainsi tâche, plutot que de reguler l’activite bancaire, de proteger l’epargne et de reformer les societes par actions, afin de retablir la confiance, de restaurer la prosperite et de defendre le Franc.

En matiere d’organisation boursiere dediee aux petites et moyennes entreprises (PME), lesucces de l’Alternative Investment Market (AIM) aurait etabli ce segment du London Stock Exchange comme le benchmark, dont l’Alternext serait une declinaison manquee. Cet article tend a infirmer cette proposition. D’abord, la performance d’Alternext (2005-2012) est moins mauvaise que ce qu’ont pu faire accroire les critiques formulees, notamment lorsqu’on la compare a celle de l’AIM au meme stade de developpement. Ensuite, les caracteristiques de l’AIM ne permettent pas de l’eriger en modele d’organisation boursiere dediee aux entreprises moyennes ou petites : le succes semble se fonder moins sur les services que l’AIM fournit a des societes modestes ou innovantes que sur l’arbitrage reglementaire qu’accomplissent des capitalisations assez importantes. Ce constat pose avec acuite la question de la nature et de l’organisation d’un marche boursier adapte aux specificites des PME.

As a stock exchange dedicated to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the success of the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) has established this segment of the London Stock Exchange as the benchmark, of which the Alternext is considered a flawed copy. This article aims to invalidate this proposition. First, the performance of Alternext (2005-2012), if compared to AIM?s performance at the same stage of development, is not as bad as critiques have been deluded the public into believing. Second, AIM characteristics are not set up as a stock exchange model dedicated to medium and small enterprises: the success seems to be based less on the services which AIM provides to small or innovative companies than on the regulatory arbitrage realized by medium and large companies. This observation acutely raises the question of the nature and organization of a stock exchange adapted to the specifications of SMEs. Classification JEL: G10, G23, G28, G32, L25, M10.

In the nineteenth century, the Paris Bourse struggled to manage counterparty risk, revealing the awkward choices for the regulation of derivatives markets. The exchange, primarily a forward market, instituted a mutual guarantee fund to prevent broker failures from snowballing into a liquidity crisis. The fund then forced the Bourse to search for mechanisms to control moral hazard. With new archival data, we describe the evolving regulatory regime and analyze the determinants of broker failures. The Bourse faced a conundrum; when it finally imposed a tight regulatory regime that limited risk, trading began to migrate off the exchange to less regulated markets.

This article sets out to explain why the Paris Bourse was highly successful in the nineteenth century in spite of the supposedly inefficient monopoly of the official market, the Parquet. The literature argues that the official monopoly was sidelined by a free, innovative market known as the Coulisse, but it fails to explain how the Coulisse emerged despite the monopoly and how the two markets persisted alongside each other during the entire century. We provide a detailed history of how these two markets emerged and interacted. The Parquet increasingly developed as a high-end market, providing security, transparency, and effective settlement-delivery to unsophisticated investors trading on the spot market. The Coulisse provided liquidity, immediacy, and opacity to professional investors trading mostly forward. In line with recent theoretical developments, we argue that the juxtaposition of heterogeneous organizations had important virtues for market participants, since it allowed the exchanges to specialize in different investors and services and made the exchanges complementary to each other. We demonstrate our claim by looking at both the formal rules and the actual functioning of the Parquet, drawing on its archives which we have recently classified.

L’article propose une economie politique, sociologiquement fondee, de la privatisation paradoxale de la bourse de Paris. Dans les annees 1980, les gouvernements successifs refondent les marges financieres de l’Etat. Les intermediaires boursiers perdent le statut d’officier ministeriel et leurs entreprises familiales sont absorbees par des institutions financieres privees, privatisees et, plus souvent encore, nationalisees. D’institution cooperative qui organisait la cotation publique de titres financiers, la bourse de Paris devient une entreprise « plus que privee».

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method aimed at identifying the environmental effects connected with a given product, process or activity along its life cycle. This paper presents results of the application of LCA method in order to evaluate the environmental advantages of natural gas over other fossil fuels and to have advanced techniques for analysing the environmental aspects of the gas industry. The evaluation of published studies and the application of the method to electricity production with fossil fuels, by using data from published databases and data collected by the gas industry, demonstrate the importance and difficulties of having reliable and updated data required for a significant LCA. Results show that the environmental advantages of natural gas over the other fossil fuels in the final use stage increase still further if the whole life cycle of the fuels, from production to final consumption, is taken into account.

When faced with a run on a “systemically important” but insolvent bank in 1889, the Banque de France pre-emptively organized a lifeboat to ensure that depositors were protected and an orderly liquidation could proceed. To protect the Banque from losses on its lifeboat loan, a guarantee syndicate was formed, penalizing those who had participated in the copper speculation that had caused the crisis bringing the bank down. Creation of the syndicate and other actions were consistent with mitigating the moral hazard from such an intervention. This episode contrasts the advice given by Bagehot to the Bank of England to counter a panic by lending freely at a high rate on good collateral, allowing insolvent institutions to fail.

A novel series of di- to pentacyclic polyprenoid sulfides ( 6, 7, 15, 16 ) which are structurally related to the recently identified highly cyclised regular polyprenoid aromatic ( 1, 2, 3 ) and saturated hydrocarbons (5) and to the widely distributed tricyclopolyprenanes (e.g., 10 ) have been characterized in a wide range of sediments. Their distributions, extending from C 13 to C 30 , are clearly dominated by the C 15 , C 20 , C 25 and C 30 homologues, each being represented by several isomers. Two C 30 isomers ( 6a and 6b ), which are generally predominant, were isolated from a sample from Semecourt (Paris basin, France) and their structure established by NMR studies. Interestingly, these two isomers are the sole sulfides present in several samples. The structure of two C 20 isomers ( 7a, 7b ) was confirmed by synthesis of standards. These new sulfides clearly derive from precursors resulting from the incomplete cyclization of regular polyprenoids (e.g., 4 ). The presence of functionalities both on the side chain and, probably in the last ring, allowed intramolecular sulfur incorporation by a process similar to that leading to the formation of low molecular weight sulfides in sediments. Detection of these new polyprenoid sulfides in recent sediments indicates that the sulfurization step occurs at an early stage of diagenesis. The hydrocarbon skeletons of the lower di-, tri- and tetracyclic sulfides may derive from widespread terpenoids present in various organisms. The predominant pentacyclic homologues, however, have a rare and specific carbon skeleton which can not be related to any known biological precursor. The fact that these lower homologues always co-occur with the pentacyclic sulfides points to a common and specific origin for the whole series. Their origin seems, however, distinct from that of the related monoaromatic and saturated regular polycyclic polyprenoid hydrocarbons ( 1-3, 5 ) which are absent from the samples where sulfides occur. The carbon isotopic composition of two C 30 pentacyclic homologues ( 6a, 6b ) could be determined in two samples and suggests that their polyprenoid precursors originate either from primary producers or from heterotrophic organisms living in the oxic part of the water column.

This paper aims at presenting an historical perspective on some of the major questions raised by Hyman Minsky and his recent followers, in particular about the instability of banking practices and the diffusion of the "originate and distribute" model under the domination of securities markets. We will argue that, when dealing with these issues, one must take great care at distinguishing what is actually new and what is recurrent. Financial innovation is nothing new. Risk taking through financial innovation is not new either. Banks have been innovating constantly over the last centuries, and many of their practices that we consider as "traditional" have not always been so, and result from a long process involving trials and errors, each error usually resulting in excessive risk-taking and waves of failures. We point out that markets have survived these crises when they have been able to organize and build the institutional structure allowing the various interests involved to become consistent with each other.

The crisis triggered by the US mortgage market meltdown in summer 2007 initially forced governments with a deep-seated belief in deregulated markets to do what they had repeatedly said they never could or would do again: namely to take stakes in financial institutions, suspend certain transactions deemed to be speculative and manipulate their currencies. Once the emergency was over, they said, they would take measures to put credit institutions and the financial system – currencies, banks and markets – back on a sound footing.

National audience; Créée par le pouvoir royal après la débâcle du financier John Law, puis démantelée lors de la Révolution française, la Bourse de Paris acquiert ses traits caractéristiques sous Napoléon : dans un lieu officiel, les agents de change, commerçants et officiers ministériels bénéficient, jusqu'au démantèlement amiable de leur corporation en 1988, du monopole légal sur les transactions boursières.À l'aube du XXIe siècle, la Bourse de Paris, transformée en société par actions, s'associe avec ses homologues amstellodamoise, bruxelloise, portugaise et le marché londonien de produits dérivés. En 2007, cet attelage paneuropéen fusionne avec la Bourse de New York. Désormais, la bourse parisienne est la filiale d'un groupe transatlantique, lui-même coté en bourse.Adopter une perspective diachronique aide à se défaire des représentations en apesanteur de la « finance » qui entravent l'analyse comme la critique. Ainsi, ce livre explicite l'entrelacs de contingence et de nécessité qui fait l'histoire économique et sociale de la Bourse de Paris et des activités boursières en France.

Baccharane (18,19-secolupane) 1, a triterpenoid skeleton seldom encountered in living organisms, has been characterized together with 17βH-des-E-lupane 2, one of its minor degradation products, in Italian Triassic sediment and crude oil samples from the Adriatic Basin by synthesis of standards. Reports of baccharane-derived triterpenoids in the field of natural products are scant and up to now restricted to terrestrial plants (angiosperms and ferns). In this regard, sedimentary baccharane derivatives may indicate a continental contribution (ferns?) to fossil organic matter; but they may also represent a contribution of as yet undetermined marine microorganisms, as has been proposed for dammarenes and dammaranes. Alternatively, they could be the bio/geochemical transformation products of biosynthetically closely related precursors such as lupane- or dammarane-type triterpenoids. The apparently restricted occurrence of baccharane derivatives in geological samples (up to now detected only in Triassic sediments of the Adriatic Basin) confers upon these compounds great value as correlation parameters and possibly as source indicators.

A novel hexane-soluble nonpolar macromolecular fraction (NPMF) has been found to occur in substantial amounts (up to 32%) in sulfur-rich crude oils and a rock extract. It is highly aliphatic and has a molecular weight culminating at several thousand mass units, as proven by spectroscopic and molecular weight studies. C-S bond hydrogenolysis of NPMF with Raney nickel as a catalyst yields high proportions of aliphatic hydrocarbons in which long linear, acyclic polyisoprenoid and carotenoid chains usually predominate (except in one case) over polycyclic structures, such as steroids and hopanoids. Hence, NPMF consists mainly of macromolecules composed of low molecular weight hydrocarbon subunits cross-linked with sulfide bridges. Use of deuterated Raney nickel indicated in one case (Rozel Point oil) that the long chains and some hopanoids are multiattached to the macromolecular network, whereas other structural subunits, such as steroids or gammacerane, are essentially monoattached. Detailed structural determinations of the hydrocarbon “building blocks” of NPMF give information on their origin and the mode of formation of these macromolecules in the subsurface. Indeed, most of the building blocks can be related to algal (e.g., long linear chains, steroids, β-carotene, and related carotenoids) or bacterial (e.g., acyclic and monocyclic carotenoids, long-chain acyclic isoprenoids) precursors which essentially exist in living organisms as monounsaturated or polyunsaturated species or are easily transformed into such species by diagenetic processes (e.g., steroids). It appears that these alkenes or polyenes become selectively trapped into a macromolecular network by reaction with inorganic sulfur species produced by bacteria in a kind of natural, low-temperature, vulcanization process. This process could start at early diagenesis already in the water column or eventually continue in the bottom sediment. Although its exact nature is yet unknown, it seems likely that the cross-linking reaction can be initiated by the cleavage of sulfur species in a radical type mechanism. The alkanes formed upon desulfurization of NPMF usually represent much higher amounts than the free alkanes of the samples and show a dramatically different composition. They may deliver very useful, complementary information in studies related to source and palaeoenvironment.

Theoretical and historical experience suggests a financial centre may either include a single, consolidated and loosely regulated stock exchange attracting all intermediaries and actors, or a variety of exchanges going from strictly regulated to completely unregulated and adapted to the needs of different categories of intermediaries, investors and issuers. Choosing between these two solutions is uneasy because few substantial changes occur at this "meta-regulatory" level. The history of the Paris exchanges provides a good example, since two legal changes in opposite directions occurred in the late 19th century, when Paris was the second financial centre in the world. In 1893, a law threatened the existing two-exchanges equilibrium by diminishing the advantages of the more regulated exchange; in 1898, another law brought them back. We analyse the impact of these two changes on the competition between the exchanges in terms of securities listed, traded volumes and spreads. We conclude competition among exchanges is a delicate matter and efficiency is not always where one would think.

Stock Market Information as a Public Good. Stakes and Outlooks of the Review of the European Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). The organization of securities markets has not benefited from the feigned attempts of reform presented by the governments since the outbreak of the current crisis. However, both speculative opportunities and the resulting risks depend on the markets on which one operates. The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive of the European Union, effective since 2007, reflects an excessive faith in the self-organizing virtues of the market. It unleashed a noxious competition on the market for financial markets that led to liquidity fragmentation and the privatization of market information. Drawing from financial history, we argue that regulated markets should be entrusted, at the European level, with a general interest mission, similar to the one they have long observed on a national level with no harm on economic development : they should centralize, consolidate and publicize post-as well as pre-trade information that are public goods. Classification JEL : E44, F36, G18, G28, H41, K23, L33, N23, N24, N43, N44., Depuis le déchaînement de la crise, l’organisation des transactions boursières n’a pas vraiment fait l’objet de velléités réformatrices. Pourtant, les opportunités spéculatives, comme les risques encourus dépendent aussi de l’organisation des marchés sur lesquels on opère. La directive européenne « Marchés d’instruments financiers » , en vigueur depuis 2007, témoigne d’une foi déraisonnable dans les vertus auto-organisatrices du marché. En introduisant la concurrence sur le marché des marchés financiers, elle a ainsi fragmenté la liquidité et accentué la privatisation des dispositifs d’échange et de transaction. Ses conséquences sont en train d’être évaluées par la recherche mais d’ores et déjà, nombre de parties prenantes dénoncent les limites et les dangers de cette nouvelle régulation. Mobilisant l’histoire financière, nous démontrons pourquoi et comment il faudrait, à l’échelle européenne, confier aux marchés réglementés une mission de service d’intérêt général comparable à celle qu’ils ont assumée par le passé sans cela ait nuit au développement économique : centraliser, traiter et diffuser l’information pré et post négociation qui constitue un bien public. Classification JEL : E44, F36, G18, G28, H41, K23, L33, N23, N24, N43, N44., Hautcœur Pierre-Cyrille, Lagneau-Ymonet Pascal, Riva Angelo. L’information boursière comme bien public. Enjeux et perspectives de la révision de la directive européenne « Marchés d’instruments financiers ». In: Revue d'économie financière, n°98-99, 2010. Information et formation économiques et financières. pp. 297-315.

24,28-dinor-18α-oleanane has been isolated from a petroleum and its structure established on the basis of ID and 2D NMR spectroscopy.

A possible deep-water non-evaporitic unit equivalent of the Messinian Lower Evaporites has been recognised in the Northern Apennine foredeep. This unit, whose existence is implicitly admitted in the two-step model of the Mediterranean Messinian salinity crisis is documented here for the first time; it occurs throughout the Apennine foredeep basin below a thick horizon of resedimented gypsum deposits, usually ascribed to the Lower Evaporites. Actually, the Lower Evaporites of the Apennine foredeep basin include both shallow-water, in situ precipitated facies and deep-water, resedimented facies deposited in distinct depocenters. The usually envisaged coeval nature of the two deposits has been recently challenged in several works based on a) physical-stratigraphic considerations about the downbasin correlation of the Messinian erosional surface cutting on top the in situ evaporites with the sharp base of the resedimented evaporites unit and b) the common occurrence of a barren unit below the resedimented evaporites which has no obvious equivalents in pre-evaporitic successions underlying the in situ precipitated evaporites. In this work a multidisciplinary study has been carried out on a 140 m-thick composite section (Fanantello section) to definitely assess the age and palaeoenvironmental characteristics of the unit underlying the resedimented gypsum deposits. The topmost part of the section comprises a 60 m-thick succession of barren euxinic shales falling entirely within a reversed polarity chron and characterised by a) the complete disappearance of Foraminifera, b) the occurrence of high salinity tolerant thecosomatous pteropods (Creseis sp.) c) the abundance peaks of the calcareous nannofossil Sphenolithus abies (interpreted as related to highly stressed likely hyperhaline conditions), d) the appearance of hyperhaline and/or stratified water molecular indicators (gammacerane

The causes of chromatic weathering in black limestone have been investigated on samples from the main quarry of Varenna (Lake Como, Italy), which provided building stones for Lombard architecture. Our studies have been carried out combing colorimetric, mineralogical, chemical, microstructural and geochemical observations. The results suggest that the chromatic weathering affecting the surfaces of black limestone is not due to oxidation of the original organic matter present in the bulk, as believed. Chemical and mechanical weathering associated with the deposition of new organic matter are the most important phenomena occurring on the surface, leading to a diffuse roughness of surface and de-cohesion.

Biodegradation of crude oil causes volumetrically important compositional changes, which lead to significant deterioration in quality, in particular during the early stages of alteration. To better understand these effects we focussed on a detailed assessment of light to moderate levels of alteration. We investigated a suite of 40 crude oil samples from five different petroleum systems to evaluate the extent of alteration occurring in reservoirs. Based on a comprehensive geochemical characterization, five individual crude oil sequences were defined, where compositional variability is mainly due to microbial activity in the reservoir. In particular, samples from the Gullfaks field (offshore Norway) and from a petroleum system offshore Angola illustrate that conventional molecular biodegradation parameters, such as the Pr/n-C17 and Ph/n-C18 alkane ratios are not suitable for defining the extent of biodegradation in petroleum reservoirs. Here, we suggest a new molecular biodegradation parameter, the degradative loss, that can be used to quantify depletion in individual crude oil constituents. The approach allows improved assessment of the extent of biodegradation in crude oil samples by means of the mean degradative loss. It is demonstrated that crude oil quality, as assessed from API gravity, can be predicted directly from the molecular composition of crude oils. Our data clearly indicate that the degradation patterns of light hydrocarbons and n-alkanes differ in different petroleum systems. This suggests that microbial communities are different and therefore generate different molecular degradation patterns which have to be evaluated individually for each system.

Cet article met en avant le role cle de la microstructure dans la resilience des marches aux crises. Le cas italien montre que l’heterogeneite complementaire entre un marche regule et un marche de gre a gre est benefique pour le developpement du marche financier. Il confirme ainsi les recentes analyses menees notamment pour la place financiere de Paris. Pourtant, en Italie, la centralite d’un marche de derives opaque et deregule a bien failli emporter le systeme financier. La microstructure de la bourse de Genes s’est en effet montree incapable de gerer le risque de contrepartie. Seule l’intervention de la Banque d’Italie, qui devint a cette occasion une banque centrale a part entiere, a sauve la peninsule d’une crise financiere majeure. A Paris, en revanche, l’heterogeneite complementaire entre la bourse officielle et le marche informel, la Coulisse, n’a pas expose le systeme financier a semblables risques car la position juridique superieure de la premiere lui permettait d’occuper une position centrale et de stabiliser ainsi le marche dans son ensemble.

La version attachee est la version de travail intitulee "Les archives de la Compagnie des Agents de Change de Paris".

Two ring-B aromatized triterpenes related to the arborane/fernane series were isolated from an Italian Triassic black shale (4 and 7) and a French Jurassic laminated bituminous limestone (7). They were identified by MS and NMR spectroscopy. These compounds, 25-norferna-5,7,9-triene 7 (C29) and 22,25,29,30-tetranor-18β-ferna-5,7,9-triene 4 (C26), in the case of the Italian sediment, belong to a family which extends to at least C32 as shown by GC-MS. The presence of higher homologs and ring-A methylated structures in the Italian Triassic shale is analogous with the hopane series, which together with carbon isotopic data obtained by gas chromatography-isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC-IRMS), strongly support a bacterial origin for most of these compounds. This suggests that 4 and 7 may result from a yet unrecognized rearrangement of sedimentary hopenes which have subsequently undergone ring-B aromatization. As an alternative, the C29 compound 7 could arise from C30 precursors not necessarily of bacterial origin (fernenes?). This hypothesis would apply particularly to the case of the Jurassic limestone, which does not show any trace of 4 nor of compounds with an extended side chain or a methyl group on ring A. Related structures also bearing an isopropyl group could derive by microbiological transformations from the corresponding fernen-3β-ols or isoarborinol as can be deduced from the occurrence of ring-A degraded monoaromatic hydrocarbons 3 and 5.

Nous etudions les bourses de Milan et de Genes entre 1894 et 1913 pour poser les premiers jalons d’une analyse institutionnaliste des bourses en tant qu’organisations hybrides. Nous nous focalisons ici sur les actifs specifiques de ces organisations, consideres par la theorie neo-institutionnaliste comme les variables-cles dans l’explication de leur forme. Dans ce cadre, les actifs specifiques de ces organisations sont les services que les bourses offrent a leurs membres. Si les deux bourses utilisent grosso modo les memes actifs, nous demontrons que le calendrier de leur mise en place et leur gestion participent a la differenciation de ces organisations, resultat contraire aux predictions de la theorie.

A new gas chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (GC/MS/MS) analytical approach for monoaromatic steroids is described in comparison with a more conventional GC/MS analysis. Some examples are reported both on standards and on real samples.