In this paper we survey the development of lending of last resort operations in the mid-19th century. We identify and document critical dimensions of the extension of lending of last resort functions, and also develop original empirical tests enabling us to identify such things as the emergence...

When money was made of gold and silver, individuals faced the problem of determining the intrinsic content of coins in many exchange situations. In this paper we look at a well-documented solution to this problem, and a key institution of the commodity money system: coin assaying. To that goal...

The emergence of the gold standard has for a long time been viewed as inevitable. Fluctuations of the gold-silver exchange rate in world markets were accused to lead to brutal and unsustainable switches of bimetallic countries' money supplies. However, more recent work has shown that the option...