There has been considerable interest in recent years in historical experiments with "free banking." This paper examines once again the American experiments in the decades before the Civil War, and the recent literature on them. The lessons of this experience for four issues are considered: (1) the appropriate mechanism for controlling the monetary base, (2) the need for a lender of last resort, (3) the costs and benefits of a bank issued currency, and (4) the potential under a regime of free banking for wildcat banking.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Historical Working Papers with number
0009.
Length: Date of creation: Dec 1989 Date of revision: Publication status: published as In Unregulated Banking: Chaos or Order? eds. Forrest Caprie and Geoffrey Wood. London: MacMillan Academic and Professional, Ltd., 1991. Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberhi:0009
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