Since its peak in the Middle Ages, the Islamic world has lost its prominent place among the great civilisations. Indeed, the scientific and industrial revolutions took place in Western Europe between the XVIIth and the XIXth centuries, and not in the Muslim world, while the free-market...

Too Big to Fail? The Newfoundland Bank Crash of 1894 In the Newfoundland Bank Crash of 1894, the commercial banks in a duopolistic loan market both went under simultaneously. The banking system was "free", as central bank, deposit insurance, and lender of last resort were all absent. The...

The paper examines the implications of financial reform and interest rate behaviour on economic growth in Nigeria. The cointegration and error correction model were used on time series data from 1970-2006. The results demonstrate that financial reform and interest rates have significant impact...

In the Newfoundland Bank Crash of 1894, the commercial banks in a duopolistic loan market both went under simultaneously. The banking system was “free”, as central bank, deposit insurance, and lender of last resort were all absent. The objective of this study is to shed light on our...

The paper examines the implications of financial reform and interest rate behaviour on economic growth in Nigeria. The cointegration and error correction model were used on time series data from 1970-2006. The results demonstrate that financial reform and interest rates have significant impact...

This paper explores the origins and evolving role of money. It stresses the role of money in solving coordination problems. This role is present with or without exchange. A historical overview of money stresses the evolutionary aspects of monetary institutions. The analysis develops a general...

This paper investigates the influence of corporate governance on financial firms' performance during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Using a unique dataset of 296 financial firms from 30 countries that were at the center of the crisis, we find that firms with more independent boards and higher...

This paper examines the impacts of banking market structure and regulation on economic growth using new data on banking market concentration and manufacturing industry-level growth rates for U.S. states during 1899–1929—a period when the manufacturing sector was expanding rapidly and...

Hooks and Robinson (2002) argue that deposit insurance in Texas during the 1920s induced banks to invest in riskier assets. Their regressions indicate that this manifestation of moral hazard may explain some of what happened, but not all. Some other mechanism, hitherto overlooked, must also have...

In his comment on our 2002 Journal of Economic History paper, Gary Richardson (2007) proposes that our work specifies moral hazard too narrowly. Richardson posits that fixed-rate deposit insurance leads to moral hazard which takes many forms. These include not only the usual notion of...