Shaping the Economy Through Public Debt

Plasmare l’economia attraverso il debito pubblico

Nicolas Barreyre ()
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Nicolas Barreyre: EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales, UMR 8168 - Mondes Américains - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: The nineteenth-century U.S. state is often understood as a non-administrative state that purposefully shied away from intervening in the economy. This essay looks at the public debt amassed during the Civil War to explore how this instrument of finance and statecraft could be used to reshape the state and make it into an influential economic player without developing a large bureaucracy. Public debt served to build and maintain the financial infrastructure that would underpin the massive capitalist-industrial development of the United States in the half-century that followed the Civil War.

Keywords: State; Banking; Money; Public Debt; Political Economy; Moneta; Settore bancario; Debito pubblico; Economia politica; Stato (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02-05
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Published in Scienza & Politica, 2026, Stato e capitalismo negli Stati Uniti. Storia, scienze sociali e culture politiche, 37 (73), pp.11-21. ⟨10.60923/issn.1825-9618/24063⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-05512503

DOI: 10.60923/issn.1825-9618/24063

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