This article argues that two alternative hypothetical central bank scenarios could have improved upon the Federal Reserve’s track record with respect to financial stability and possibly overall macroeconomic performance in its first century. The first scenario is to assume that the charter of...

This paper examines the origins and early performance of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort. The Fed was established to overcome the problems of the National Banking era, in particular an “inelastic” currency and the absence of an effective lender of last resort. As conceived by...

This paper examines the origins and early performance of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort. The Fed was established to overcome the problems of the National Banking era, in particular an "inelastic" currency and the absence of an effective lender of last resort. As conceived by Paul...

This paper examines the origins and early performance of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort. The Fed was established to overcome the problems of the National Banking era, in particular an inelastic currency and the absence of an effective lender of last resort. As conceived by Paul...

This paper examines the origins and early performance of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort. The Fed was established to overcome the problems of the National Banking era, in particular an “inelastic” currency and the absence of an effective lender of last resort. As conceived by...

We study linkages between financial development, international trade, and long-run growth using data since 1880 for 17 now-developed “Atlantic” economies and a set of cross country and dynamic panel data models. We find that finance and trade reinforce each other in data before 1930, but...

The evolution of the IMS and IFS in the past several hundred years can be viewed through the lens of the Copernican heliocentric system developed over 500 years ago. We trace out the evolution across regimes of the IMS and IFS in terms of network representations of the Copernican system. We...

This paper surveys the co-evolution of monetary policy and financial stability for a number of countries across four exchange rate regimes from 1880 to the present. Historical evidence is presented on the incidence, costs and determinants of financial crises along with some empirical evidence on...

We study common features in the income velocity of money, income, and interest rates for Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Sweden and Norway using annual data from 1870. The recently developed and refined techniques of testing for cointegration are employed. The evidence suggests there is a unique...

This paper examines the alternative views of fixed versus floating exchange rates presented in Gottfried Haberler's Prosperity and Depression (1937) and Ragnar Nurkse's Interwar Currency Experience (1944). It shows how Haberler presented a model of exchange rates that is an anticipation of the...