We use the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 to study the effect of bankers on corporate boards in facilitating access to external finance. In the early twentieth century, securities underwriters commonly held directorships with American corporations; this was especially true for railroads, which...

The market value of colonial New Jersey's paper money is decomposed into its real asset present value and its liquidity premium. Its real asset present value accounted for over 80 percent, whereas its value as money per se accounted for under 20, percent of its market value. Colonial paper money...

Maryland's non-legal-tender paper money emissions between 1765 and 1775 are reconstructed to determine the quantities outstanding and their redemption dates, providing a substantial correction to the literature. Over 80 percent of this paper money's current market value was expected real asset...

Maryland’s non-legal-tender paper money emissions between 1765 and 1775 are reconstructed to determine the quantities outstanding and their redemption dates, providing a substantial correction to the literature. Over 80 percent of this paper money’s current market value was expected real...

We study interbank lending and asset sales markets in which banks with surplus liquidity have market power vis-à-vis banks needing liquidity, frictions arise in lending due to moral hazard, and assets are bank-specific. Surplus banks ration lending and instead purchase assets from needy banks,...

Under the Articles of the Confederation, the central government of the United States had limited power to tax. Therefore, large debts accumulated during the US War for Independence traded at deep discounts. That situation framed a US fiscal crisis in the 1780s. A political revolution ?for that...

In this paper, we consider whether or not inequality forces society to expend more resources on supervision which imposes an extra cost to doing business. Some argue that since inequality deteriorates social capital, there is a greater need for supervisory labor which is a costly burden to bear....

El best-seller de Ken Follett, Una fortuna peligrosa, además de los ingredientes habituales del género, contiene abundante información económica, al relatar la historia de un banco ficticio, pero cuyas operaciones y problemas son idénticos a los de los bancos reales, en una sucesión de...

In the wake of a series of crises, international and domestic financial regulation has become highly complex and prescriptive, and oriented to leverage, liquidity, and capital ratios among financial institutions. This raises concerns over monitoring incentives, and over the increased role of...

This paper offers some preliminary insights into the impact of a particular type of credit instrument, the lien, on the distribution of de facto and de jure political power in the postbellum US South and the Australian colony of New South Wales. De facto political power arises when wealth...