In recent years, an increasing number of developing countries have adopted market-determined floating exchange rates. This development has represented a significant step forward in the evolution toward exchange rate flexibility that has taken place in the developing country group since the...

Using newly collected discount rate data for six Swiss cities, we find no evidence of increasing integration during a 30-year period of lightly regulated free banking. We attribute this to two structural issues: banks had incentives to protect their local monopolies, and the inherent instability...