Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2009
This paper tests the Value Additivity Principle (VAP) of financial assets with the pricing of Standard Oil securities in 1912. The results are somewhat mixed: the VAP does not generally describe the daily prices of equivalent Standard Oil portfolios, but it accurately describes their average market values; and the portfolio values display convergent adjustment behavior that tends to equalize them quite rapidly. On balance, these findings are consistent with the VAP.