Unregulated and regulated free banking. The case of Switzerland reinterpreted

Nils Herger (nils.herger@szgerzensee.ch)
Additional contact information
Nils Herger: Study Center Gerzensee, http://www.szgerzensee.ch/

No 19.06, Working Papers from Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee

Abstract: The free-banking history of Switzerland is commonly subdivided into a period with unfettered competition (1826 - 1881) and strong banknote regulation (1881 - 1907). This paper suggests that unrestricted competition between private note-issuing banks gave rise to a fragmented paper-money system, which suffered from a lack of standard- ised, and commonly accepted, banknotes. Minimum-reserve requirements and mutual- acceptance rules were introduced to standardise banknotes. Rather than overissuing, these regulatory interventions restricted the exibility (or "elasticity") of the paper- money supply. It turned out that a central note-issuing bank was needed to supply adequate amounts of standardised banknotes.

Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2019-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-mon, nep-pay and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.szgerzensee.ch/fileadmin/Dateien_Anwend ... g_papers/wp-1906.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
None

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:szg:worpap:1906

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Studienzentrum Gerzensee, Postfach 21, 3115 Gerzensee
library@szgerzensee.ch
The price is Free.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee Studienzentrum Gerzensee, Postfach 21, 3115 Gerzensee.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by library (library@szgerzensee.ch).