Checks remained local payments instruments throughout virtually the entire nineteenth century. Their significant use in interregional transactions dates only to the 1890s. We explain their lagged spatial diffusion by the evolution of centralized payments institutions to coordinate transactions...

This paper pools data from independent household surveys of Japanese workers roughly spanning the Taisho period (1912–1926), a time before private-business or government-provided social safety nets. First, we construct estimates of permanent and transitory income and then estimate saving...

Focusing on the New York banking sector, we analyze a neglected, but profound impact of the National Banking Acts. By resisting federal banking legislation and “boycotting” newly chartered national banks, the New York Clearing House Association members created market opportunities for the...