During the colonial era, the French colonial government in Canada experimented with paper money printed on the back of playing cards. The first experiment lasted from 1685 to 1719. In the first years, there was little inflation in spite of a rapidly expanding stock of playing card money. It is...

Generally, the historical literature presents the period from 1817 to 1851 in Lower Canada (modern day Québec) as one of negative economic growth. This period also coincides with the rise of free banking in the colony. In this paper we propose to study the effects of free banking on economic...

The option clause is a contractual device from free banking experiences meant to prevent banknote redemption duels. It has been used within the Diamond and Dybvig [Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig. 1983. "Bank Runs, Deposit Insurance, and Liquidity." Journal of Political Economy 91 (3):...

A recurring citation in systemic risk literature reviews (P. Aghion, P. Bolton, and M. Dewatripont. 2000. “Contagious Bank Failures in a Free Banking System.” European Economic Review 44:713–18) offers a model where what they describe as a free banking system is vulnerable to contagious...