Before 1893 the regional branches of Norges Bank set their own bank rates. We discuss how bank rate autonomy could be reconciled with the fixed exchange rate commitments of the silver and gold standard. Although the headquarters of the bank was in Trondhjem, we find that the Christiania branch...

This paper studies the microfoundations of the so-called "gold device" policy by analysing a new dataset on the Bank of England's operations in the gold market at the heyday of the classical gold standard. It explains that "gold devices" must be understood in connection to the Bank's role as...

Under the classical gold standard (1880-1914), the Bank of France maintained a stable discount rate while the Bank of England changed its rate very frequently. Why did the policies of these central banks, the two pillars of the gold standard, differ so much? How did the Bank of France manage to...

The author argues that the idea, that the Bank of England accepted Walter Bagehot's recommendations from around the 1870s onwards and adopted the role of lender of last resort for the British financial markets, is a misconception. The published balance sheets give this impression, but a closer...

According to the classical view, an economy's lender of last resort should be its central bank. For brief periods of time, the bank might suspend convertibility in order to provide the liquidity needed to support the domestic credit market. Recent experience of financial crises demonstrates the...

This paper situates the early history of the Bank of England in the 17th century environment where the circulation of specie-based coin caused it to wear down, prompting debasement by monetary authorities (Lane and Mueller 1985). Thus, the 19th Gold Standard was only possible because of prior...