Lessons from the American Experience with Free Banking

Hugh Rockoff

No 9, NBER Historical Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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.

Date: 1989-12
Note: DAE
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Published as In Unregulated Banking: Chaos or Order? eds. Forrest Caprie and Geoffrey Wood. London: MacMillan Academic and Professional, Ltd., 1991.

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