The ability to mobilize large armies for the purposes of national defense and territorial expansion is a key feature of the modern state. Post-revolutionary France was among the first European powers to adopt large-scale conscription to man its army. For its conscription efforts to be effective,...

French international monetary policy under Charles de Gaulle is re-examined in this paper. We argue that the objectives of French policy in the 1960s were consistent with plans developed in the interwar period and Bretton Woods of establishing a symmetrical and co-operative gold-exchange...

Because of secrecy, little is known about the political economy of central bank lending. Utilizing a novel, hand-collected historical daily dataset on loans to commercial banks, we analyze how personal connections matter for lending of last resort, highlighting the importance of governance for...