State Banking In Early America: A New Economic History Hardcover

Howard Bodenhorn

This manuscript represents the first book-length treatment of early American banking in over 40 years. During that time economic historians have offered new interpretations of several important developments in antebellum American banking practice and policy. Such features of early American financial markets as free banking, branch banking, deposit insurance, and micro-banking have been radically reinterpreted since Redlich and Hammond wrote. Moreover, economic theory has made significant advances, and this manuscript incorporates those theoretical insights into every chapter. The so-called "information-theoretic" approach links the chapters into a unified whole. Early sections of each chapter synthesize the extant research; later sections present extensions, new finding and new interpretations.

0195147766

9780195147766

English

Oxford University Press Inc

1 December 2002

368

Bodenhorn's book aptly fills in the details of the emergence and meteoric growth of one of these components, and describes how lessons learned in the period of early state banking have gone on to shape the institutional forms that remain with us today. * EH.Net 2003 * Good economic history should be both good economics and good history. This book is good economic history, and Bodenhorn has clearly aimed for an audience of both economists and historians. * Bradley Hansen, Eastern Economic Journal, Winter 2006 *