This paper presents a monetary explanation the US recession of 1797. Credit expansion initiated by Bank of the United States in the early 1790s unleashed a bout of inflation and low real interest rates which spurred a speculative investment bubble in real estate and capital intensive...

This paper investigates the six textbooks most commonly adopted in U.S. undergraduate money and banking courses for how they describe the influences that commercial banks and central banks have on macroeconomic stability. We examine seven topics: (1) the inherent stability of banks, bank runs,...

The most sophisticated monetary and banking policy advice available in the decades after 1776was found in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Smith recommended free competition amongnationwide banks of issue with only minimal legal restrictions and no legal privileges. Yetneither Alexander...

Anarchy and the Law assembles for the first time in one volume the most important classic and contemporary studies exploring and debating non-state legal and political systems, especially involving the tradition of natural law and private contracts. Should markets and contracts provide law, and...

Must the state handle the adjudication of disputes? Researchers of different perspectives, from heterodox scholars of law who advocate legal pluralism to libertarian economists who advocate privatizing law, have increasingly questioned the idea that the state is, or should be, the only source of...

This article provides a critical analysis of Frye (2000) and existing theories of self-governance. Following up on the recent studies by Stringham (2003, 2003), we focus our attention on the emergence of financial markets for several reasons. The common perception is that complicated financial...