Newspapers in the post-Reconstruction South disseminated propaganda accusing Black voters of excessive public corruption. This paper analyzes new data showing that propaganda influenced election outcomes by weakening biracial political coalitions that challenged the Democratic Party immediately...

In 1790, a U.S. paper dollar was widely held in disrepute (something shoddy was not `worth a Continental'). By 1879, a U.S. paper dollar had become 'as good as gold.' These outcomes emerged from how the U.S. federal government financed three wars: the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and...

Fraud and irrationality are often blamed for financial manias and panics. Investor euphoria can unleash social and technological breakthroughs, but the subsequent failures can destroy value and radicalize the political sphere. Are these events random, idiosyncratic, or driven by some force? The...

During the U.S. Civil War, the Confederate Congress adopted three currency reforms that were intended to reduce the quantity of Treasury notes in circulation by inducing the money-holding public to exchange their notes for long-term bonds. In this paper, we examine the political factors that...

In a recent NBER paper, Cutsail and Grubb argue that North Carolina's colonial bills of credit were valued like discount bonds, with a current market value largely determined by the discounted value of the bills when paid into the treasury in taxes or other public payments. Grubb has previously...

Few social scientists have equaled the impact on political science of Douglass C. North, co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1993. His extraordinary influence emanated from his ideas but was also a result of his vast social network of collaborators, students, and friendly...

The twenty-first century “patent litigation explosion” is not unprecedented. In fact, the nineteenth century saw an even bigger surge of patent cases. During that era, the most prolific patent enforcers brought hundreds or even thousands of suits, dwarfing the efforts of today's leading...

I exploit variation in the adoption of disclosure and supervisory regulation across U.S. states to examine their impact on the development and stability of commercial banks. The empirical results suggest that the adoption of state‐level requirements to report financial statements in local...