Many economists view competition among central banks as leading to an over-issue of money. This book challenges the conventional wisdom by showing that competition among Federal Reserve banks in the 1920s did not result in an over-issue problem. The US Congress imposed a more monopolistic structure on the Fed in the mid-1930s so that it could accomodate an increase in the revenue needs of the Treasury. This book is unique in emphasizing the evolution of the Fed's structure from a highly competitive one to a highly monopolistic one.

This book contains a collection of Michael D. Bordo's essays written singly and with colleagues on the classical gold standard and related regimes based directly or indirectly on gold convertibility. The gold standard (and its variants) was the basis for both international and domestic monetary arrangements from the third quarter of the nineteenth century until 1971 when President Nixon closed the US gold window, effectively ending the Bretton Woods International Monetary System. Although the gold standard and its variants are now history, it still has great appeal for policymakers and...

This volume deals with the monetary history of Italy from independence in 1861 to 1992. It provides the first complete analysis of a country that has experienced diverse and often dramatic monetary conditions. The book contributes in a novel way not only to the monetary debate, but also to fiscal and institutional questions. The authors combine economic theory, statistical data, and history in an accessible way that should prove useful to both economic historians and monetary economists.

This is the first major study of post-Civil War banking panics in almost a century. The author has constructed for the first time estimates of bank closures and their incidence in each of the five separate banking disturbances. The author also reevaluates the role of the New York Clearing House in forestalling several panics and explains why it failed to do so in 1893 and 1907, concluding that structural defects of the National Banking Act were not the primary cause of the panics.

This book is a collection of articles by eminent economic historians from five European colonial powers and from six New World countries. The articles focus on the legacy of the Old World fiscal institutions (taxes and expenditures) and monetary institutions (currency and banking) for the New World from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Did the success or failure of the New World's institutions in the independent countries reflect the foundations and the flaws of the former colonial masters or adaptation to the new environment?

This book presents a history of Western monetary systems and explains why the system was preferred to a gold standard before 1800. Professor Redish argues that the technological ability to issue fiduciary monies, and a commitment mechanism to prevent opportunistic governments changing the ratio between the currency and a unit of gold, were (frequently overlooked) prerequisites for the emergence of the Classical gold standard. The simplicity of the gold standard, a monetary system where there is a fixed ratio between a weight of gold and a unit of currency, makes it an obvious focus for...

Austria played a prominent role in the worldwide events of 1931 as the largest bank in Central and Eastern Europe, the Viennese Credit-Anstalt, collapsed and led Europe into a financial panic that spread to other parts of the world. The events in Austria were pivotal to the economic developments of the 1930s, yet the literature about them is sparse. This book tries to fill this gap. Aurel Schubert analyzes the crisis using the leading theories of financial crises, identifies the causes of the crisis, examines the market's efficiency in predicting events, analyzes how the crisis was...

This important contribution to comparative economic history examines different countries' experiences with different monetary regimes. The contributors lay particular emphasis on how the regimes fared when placed under stress such as wars and/or other changes in the economic environment. Covering the experience of ten countries over the period 1700-1990, the book employs the latest techniques of economic analysis in order to understand why particular monetary regimes and policies succeeded or failed.

This book reassesses Western Europe's miraculous economic recovery from World War II, exposing the role of international institutions.

Central banks have emerged as the key players in national and international policy making. This book explores their evolution since World War II in 20 industrial countries. The study considers the mix of economic, political, and institutional forces that have affected central bank behavior and its relationship with government. The analysis reconciles vastly different views about the role of central banks in the making of economic policies. One finding is that monetary policy is an evolutionary process.