There is a large and growing literature on the relationship between financial development and economic growth. It suggests a positive causal link running from finance to growth. We consider, in broad terms, the existing historical evidence on this connection. We demonstrate that constraints on...

Does international financial integration boost economic growth? The empirical literature has not yet established a robust link between openness to the international capital market and economic growth. In this paper we turn to the economic history of the first era of financial globalization...

The pivotal role played by non-banking institutions in supporting the expansion of international trade after the Napoleonic Wars and before first globalization c. 1870 - 1913 has long been recognised. Merchant-bankers in particular played a crucial role by advancing monies to consignors of...

This essay discusses trends in new banking history scholarship. It does so by conducting bibliometric content analysis of the entire literature involving the history of banks, bankers and banking published in all major academic journals since the year 2000. It places this recent scholarship in...

Economic institutions encompassing increasingly sophisticated concepts of risk-sharing and liability flourished in Europe beginning in the High Middle Ages. These innovations occurred in an environment of fragmented local jurisdictions, not within the framework of the territorial state. In this...

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 reviews a collection of essays by Charles Kindleberger. After a quick overview of the contents of the volume, the paper criticizes the position advanced by Kindleberger that monetary policy should seek to counteract asset price inflation. The review also discusses critically...

During the 1930s, rating agencies took up a central role in regulatory supervision that they still have today. The proximate cause for this changeover was the economic shock of the Great Depression. Exploring the performance of rating agencies in assessing the risks of sovereign debt, an...

In the first era of financial globalization (1880-1914), global capital market integration led to substantial net capital movements from rich to poor economies. The historical experience stands in contrast to the contemporary globalization where gross capital mobility is equally high, but did...