The authors review the history of international monies and the theory related to their adoption and use. There are four key characteristics of these currencies: high unitary value; relatively low inflation rates for long periods; issuance by major economic and trading powers; and spontaneous, as...

The authors examine the relative importance of the growth of physical and human capital and the growth of total factor productivity (TFP) using newly organized data on 145 countries that span more than one hundred years for twenty-four of these countries. For all countries, only 3 percent of...

The authors show that estimated productivities of labor and capital, which rationalize trade flows across countries, are related to total factor productivities, which rationalize output differences across countries. They present evidence that these productivities from trade are related to the...

We examine the connection between the creation of stock exchanges and economic growth with a new set of data on economic growth that spans a longer time period than generally available. We find that economic growth increases relative to the rest of the world after a stock exchange opens. Our...

Are banks that fail in banking panics the riskiest ones prior to the panics? The free banking era in the United States provides useful data to examine this question because the assets held by the banks were traded at the New York Stock Exchange. The authors estimate the ex ante riskiness of a...

We provide substantial evidence that the futures market for West Texas Intermediate crude oil increased the short-term volatility of the cash price of crude oil. We show that the variability of prices increased using both published posted prices and transaction prices for producers. This...

This paper examines the effect of finance on long-term economic growth using Bayesian model averaging to address model uncertainty in cross-country growth regressions. The literature largely focuses on financial indicators that assess the financial depth of banks and stock markets. These...

In recent years, demutualized stock exchanges have been increasingly engaging in M&A and alliance activities. To examine the effect of these growth strategies on exchange shareholders’ value creation, we focus on 14 public stock exchanges and investigate their short-run share price responses...

The European banking industry joined forces to achieve a fully integrated market for retail payment services in the euro area: the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). Against this background, the present paper examines the fundamental relationship between retail payment business and overall bank...