Studies of early U.S. growth traditionally have emphasized real-sector explanations for an acceleration that by many accounts became detectable between 1815 and 1840. Interestingly, the establishment of the nation's basic financial structure predated by three decades the canals, railroads, and...

This paper examines whether financial intermediaries have played a leading role in influencing India's economic performance. After describing the evolution and functions of the financial sector, we construct a set of vector autoregressive and vector error correction models to evaluate the...

The Panic of 1837 stands among the most severe banking crises in U.S. history, marking the start of a business downturn from which the nation would not recover for six years. Given the serious consequences of the panic for the rapidly evolving commercial and industrial sectors, it is thus not...

Using 114 years of U.S. stock market data we try to relate movements in stock prices to changes in technology. We find measures of technological progress explain 37% of the 3.9% annual growth in the stock market over the 1885-1998 period, the "Jazz-Age" (1918-1934) entrants were not overvalued,...