IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v68y2008i02p438-461_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Banks, Credit Markets, and Early American Development: A Case Study of Entry and Competition

Author

Listed:
  • WANG, TA-CHEN

Abstract

New England experienced a significant economic transformation after the Revolutionary War. Despite an extensive literature on American development, little is known about the precise role of banks in this process. This article exploits a detailed dataset from Plymouth County, Massachusetts to show that the first bank during its early stage was far more selective in lending than the pre-existing personal credit market. Thus the mere introduction of a single bank did not broaden access to credit. Following the liberalization of chartering policy in the 1820s, however, freer entry and competition drove banks to extend credit to farmers and artisans.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Ta-Chen, 2008. "Banks, Credit Markets, and Early American Development: A Case Study of Entry and Competition," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(2), pages 438-461, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:68:y:2008:i:02:p:438-461_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050708000363/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Howard Bodenhorn, 2011. "Partnership fragility and credit costs," NBER Working Papers 16689, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Madestam, Andreas, 2014. "Informal finance: A theory of moneylenders," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 157-174.
    3. Ivanov, Martin & Ganev, Georgy, 2015. "Bulgarian business elite, 1900s-2000s," MPRA Paper 103427, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Elizabeth Caucutt & Thomas Cooley & Nezih Guner, 2013. "The farm, the city, and the emergence of social security," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 1-32, March.
    5. Sofia Murhem, 2016. "Credit for the poor: the decline of pawnbroking 1880–1930," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 20(2), pages 198-214.
    6. Howard Bodenhorn, 2016. "Two Centuries of Finance and Growth in the United States, 1790-1980," Working Papers id:11352, eSocialSciences.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:68:y:2008:i:02:p:438-461_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.