This book presents a detailed and surprising history of money from Charlemagne's reform in approximately AD800 to the end of the Silver Wars in 1896. It also summarizes twentieth century developments and places them in their historical context.

This set draws together rare material from 1870-1930 and ranges from monetary economics to straight banking theory. English banking theory changed little after a learning process in the first half of the nineteenth century. Some of the banks grew to be the biggest in the world and a banking system evolved that was probably the most stable in the world.
This collection demonstrates the establishment of English banking, activities covered and problems encountered by banks, and how they played a major role in the economy during the last century.

The Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) which some members of the European Union have joined, has prompted much discussion of monetary union. Most of this discussion has focused on the immediate issues, such as prospects for the Euro and the possibility of expanding the Euro-zone. This work stands back and considers the relevant theory or what lessons might be drawn from other unions that have been formed in the past as well as looking at EMU directly.

The capacity of national central banks to step in and bail out an economy is one that has proved to be very important over the years. This collection from Wood & Capie brings together important literature.

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.

In Japan, as in other parts of the world, banking plays an essential role in economic development. Studying key industries such as banking provides an important tool for genuinely understanding a country. This book gives that understanding of Japan for the first time in English. It thoroughly documents Japanese banking during a crucial one-hundred years--from the opening of her borders to the world in 1859 through two world wars--from which the Japanese economy finally emerged as one of the most powerful global forces.

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 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...