IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberhi/0009.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Lessons from the American Experience with Free Banking

Author

Listed:
  • Hugh Rockoff

Abstract

There has been considerable interest in recent years in historical experiments with "free banking." This paper examines once again the American experiments in the decades before the Civil War, and the recent literature on them. The lessons of this experience for four issues are considered: (1) the appropriate mechanism for controlling the monetary base, (2) the need for a lender of last resort, (3) the costs and benefits of a bank issued currency, and (4) the potential under a regime of free banking for wildcat banking.

Suggested Citation

  • Hugh Rockoff, 1989. "Lessons from the American Experience with Free Banking," NBER Historical Working Papers 0009, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberhi:0009
    Note: DAE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/h0009.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kahn, James A, 1985. "Another Look at Free Banking in the United States [New Evidence on the Free Banking Era]," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 881-885, September.
    2. King, Robert G., 1983. "On the economics of private money," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 127-158.
    3. Economopoulos, Andrew J, 1988. "Illinois Free Banking Experience," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 20(2), pages 249-264, May.
    4. Rolnick, Arthur J & Weber, Warren E, 1983. "New Evidence on the Free Banking Era," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(5), pages 1080-1091, December.
    5. Charles Goodhart, 1988. "The Evolution of Central Banks," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262570734, April.
    6. Rockoff, Hugh, 1974. "The Free Banking Era: A Reexamination," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 6(2), pages 141-167, May.
    7. Cowen, Tyler & Kroszner, Randall, 1987. "The Development of the New Monetary Economics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(3), pages 567-590, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Herger, Nils, 2022. "Unregulated and regulated free banking: Evidence from the case of Switzerland (1826–1907)," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    2. Pablo Martín-Aceña & Elena Martínez Ruíz & Pilar Nogués Marco, 2012. "The Bank of Spain: a National Financial Insitution," Documentos de Trabajo (DT-AEHE) 1205, Asociación Española de Historia Económica.
    3. Gorton, Gary, 1999. "Pricing free bank notes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 33-64, August.
    4. Gary Gorton, 1993. "Reputation Formation in Early Bank Debt Markets," NBER Working Papers 4400, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Stefano Ugolini, 2018. "The Historical Evolution of Central Banking," Post-Print hal-01887004, HAL.
    6. Mehmet Hasan Eken & Erkut Baloglu, 2017. "Crypto Currencies and their Destinies in the Future," International Journal of Finance & Banking Studies, Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 6(4), pages 01-11, April.
    7. Tobias Adrian & Adam B. Ashcraft & Nicola Cetorelli, 2013. "Shadow bank monitoring," Staff Reports 638, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    8. Michael D. Bordo, 2017. "Currency competition in Switzerland," Aussenwirtschaft, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science, Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economics Research, vol. 68(01), pages 101-108, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arthur J. Rolnick & Warren E. Weber, 1986. "Inherent Instability in Banking: The Free Banking Experience," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 5(3), pages 877-890, Winter.
    2. William N. Butos, 1986. "The Knowledge Problem under Alternative Monetary Regimes," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 5(3), pages 849-876, Winter.
    3. Arthur J. Rolnick & Warren E. Weber, 1988. "Explaining the demand for free bank notes," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 12(Spr), pages 21-35.
    4. Matthew Jaremski, 2010. "Free Bank Failures: Risky Bonds versus Undiversified Portfolios," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(8), pages 1565-1587, December.
    5. Jeremy Atack & Matthew S. Jaremski & Peter L. Rousseau, 2014. "Did Railroads Make Antebellum U.S. Banks More Sound?," NBER Chapters, in: Enterprising America: Businesses, Banks, and Credit Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 149-178, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Gary Gorton, "undated". "The Enforceability of Private Money Contracts, Market Efficiency, and Technological Change," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 19-90, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    7. Olivier Brossard & Hicham Chetioui, 2003. "Histoire longue : la naissance de la réglementation prudentielle, 1800-1945," Revue d'Économie Financière, Programme National Persée, vol. 73(4), pages 13-37.
    8. Herger, Nils, 2022. "Unregulated and regulated free banking: Evidence from the case of Switzerland (1826–1907)," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    9. Marcel Canoy & Machiel van Dijk & Jan Lemmen & Ruud de Mooij & Jürgen Weigand, 2001. "Competition and stability in banking," CPB Document 15.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    10. Hiroshi Fujiki & Edward J. Green & Akira Yamazaki, 1999. "Sharing the risk of settlement failure," Working Papers 594, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    11. Bordo, Michael D., 1986. "Explorations in monetary history: A survey of the literature," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 339-415, October.
    12. Shambaugh, Jay C., 2006. "An experiment with multiple currencies: the American monetary system from 1838-60," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 609-645, October.
    13. Michael D. Bordo & David C. Wheelock, 2010. "The promise and performance of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort 1914-1933," Working Papers 2010-036, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    14. Cyril Monnet & Daniel R. Sanches, 2015. "Private Money and Banking Regulation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(6), pages 1031-1062, September.
    15. Howard Bodenhorn, 2006. "Bank Chartering and Political Corruption in Antebellum New York. Free Banking as Reform," NBER Chapters, in: Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America's Economic History, pages 231-257, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Daniel R. Sanches, 2016. "The Free-Banking Era: A Lesson for Today?," Economic Insights, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, vol. 1(3), pages 9-14, July.
    17. Smith, Bruce D & Weber, Warren E, 1999. "Private Money Creation and the Suffolk Banking System," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 31(3), pages 624-659, August.
    18. Gerald P. Dwyer & Rik Hafer, 2001. "Bank failures in banking panics: Risky banks or road kill?," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2001-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    19. Adolfo Meisel, 1998. "La Banca Central en Colombia: de la autonomía privada a la autonomía pública, 1923-1997," Coyuntura Económica, Fedesarrollo, March.
    20. Arthur J. Rolnick & Warren E. Weber, 1982. "A new explanation for free bank failures," Staff Report 79, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberhi:0009. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.