IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/10479.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bank Chartering and Political Corruption in Antebellum New York: Free Banking as Reform

Author

Listed:
  • Howard Bodenhorn

Abstract

One traditional and oft-repeated explanation of the political impetus behind free banking connects the rise of Jacksonian populism and a rejection of the privileges associated with corporate chartering. A second views free banking as an ill-informed inflationist, pro business response to the financial panic of 1837. This chapter argues that both explanations are lacking. Free banking was the progeny of the corruption associated with bank chartering and reflected social, political and economic backlashes against corruption dating to the late-1810s. Three strands of political thought -- Antimasonic egalitarianism, Jacksonian pragmatism, and pro-business American Whiggism -- converged in the 1830s and led to economic reform. Equality of treatment was the political watchword of the 1830s and free banking was but one manifestation of this broader impulse.

Suggested Citation

  • Howard Bodenhorn, 2004. "Bank Chartering and Political Corruption in Antebellum New York: Free Banking as Reform," NBER Working Papers 10479, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10479
    Note: DAE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w10479.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward L. Glaeser & Andrei Shleifer, 2003. "The Rise of the Regulatory State," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(2), pages 401-425, June.
    2. King, Robert G., 1983. "On the economics of private money," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 127-158.
    3. Kenneth L. Sokoloff, 1988. "Inventive Activity in Early Industrial America: Evidence From Patent Records, 1790 - 1846," NBER Working Papers 2707, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Charles W. Calomiris, 1989. "Deposit insurance: lessons from the record," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 13(May), pages 10-30.
    5. Anna J. Schwartz, 1987. "The Beginning of Competitive Banking in Philadelphia, 1782–1809," NBER Chapters, in: Money in Historical Perspective, pages 3-23, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Frye, Timothy & Shleifer, Andrei, 1997. "The Invisible Hand and the Grabbing Hand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 354-358, May.
    7. Sylla, Richard & Legler, John B. & Wallis, John J., 1987. "Banks and State Public Finance in the New Republic: The United States, 1790–1860," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(2), pages 391-403, June.
    8. Economopoulos, Andrew & O'Neill, Heather, 1995. "Bank Entry during the Antebellum Period," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(4), pages 1071-1085, November.
    9. Ross Levine, 1997. "Financial Development and Economic Growth: Views and Agenda," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 688-726, June.
    10. Sokoloff, Kenneth L., 1988. "Inventive Activity in Early Industrial America: Evidence From Patent Records, 1790–1846," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(4), pages 813-850, December.
    11. Naomi R. Lamoreaux, 1994. "Insider Lending: Banks, Personal Connections, and Economic Development in Industrial New England," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number lamo94-1, July.
    12. Bodenhorn, Howard, 2002. "State Banking in Early America: A New Economic History," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195147766.
    13. Bodenhorn,Howard, 2000. "A History of Banking in Antebellum America," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521662857.
    14. Arthur Grinath III & John Joseph Wallis & Richard Sylla, 1997. "Debt, Default, and Revenue Structure: The American State Debt Crisis in the Early 1840s," NBER Historical Working Papers 0097, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Murphy, Kevin M & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1993. "Why Is Rent-Seeking So Costly to Growth?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 409-414, May.
    16. Bulow, Jeremy I, 1982. "Durable-Goods Monopolists," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(2), pages 314-332, April.
    17. Rockoff, Hugh, 1974. "The Free Banking Era: A Reexamination," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 6(2), pages 141-167, May.
    18. Paolo Mauro, 1995. "Corruption and Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 681-712.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bodenhorn, Howard, 2008. "Free banking and bank entry in nineteenth-century New York," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 175-201, October.
    2. Howard Bodenhorn, 2016. "Two Centuries of Finance and Growth in the United States, 1790-1980," Working Papers id:11352, eSocialSciences.
    3. Stephen Haber, 2008. "Differential Paths of Financial Development: Evidence from New World Economies," NBER Chapters, in: Understanding Long-Run Economic Growth: Geography, Institutions, and the Knowledge Economy, pages 89-120, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Stephen Haber & Enrico Perotti, 2008. "The Political Economy of Financial Systems," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-045/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    5. Howard Bodenhorn & David Cuberes, 2010. "Financial development and city growth: Evidence from Northeastern American cities, 1790-1870," Working Papers 2010/35, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    6. Cull, Robert & Davis, Lance E. & Lamoreaux, Naomi R. & Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, 2006. "Historical financing of small- and medium-size enterprises," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 3017-3042, November.
    7. John Joseph Wallis, 2004. "Constitutions, Corporations, and Corruption: American States and Constitutional Change," NBER Working Papers 10451, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Kose,Ayhan & Ohnsorge,Franziska Lieselotte & Ye,Lei Sandy & Islamaj,Ergys, 2017. "Weakness in investment growth : causes, implications and policy responses," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7990, The World Bank.
    9. Ross Levine & Norman Loayza & Thorsten Beck, 2002. "Financial Intermediation and Growth: Causality and Causes," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Leonardo Hernández & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Se (ed.),Banking, Financial Integration, and International Crises, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 2, pages 031-084, Central Bank of Chile.
    10. Alesina, Alberto & Angeletos, George-Marios, 2005. "Corruption, inequality, and fairness," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(7), pages 1227-1244, October.
    11. Wallis, John & Weingast, Barry, 2005. "The Financing of 19th Century Internal Improvements," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt7nh1c6df, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    12. Sonin, Konstantin, 2003. "Why the rich may favor poor protection of property rights," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 715-731, December.
    13. Ekaterina Vostroknutova, 2003. "Shadow Economy, Rent-Seeking Activities and the Perils of Reinforcement of the Rule of Law," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 2003-578, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    14. Howard Bodenhorn, 2017. "Opening Access: Banks and Politics in New York from the Revolution to the Civil War," NBER Working Papers 23560, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Thorsten Beck & Luc Laeven, 2006. "Institution building and growth in transition economies," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 157-186, June.
    16. Bodenhorn, Howard & Cuberes, David, 2018. "Finance and urbanization in early nineteenth-century New York," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 47-58.
    17. Foellmi, Reto & Oechslin, Manuel, 2007. "Who gains from non-collusive corruption?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 95-119, January.
    18. Chen, Minghua & Jeon, Bang Nam & Wang, Rui & Wu, Ji, 2015. "Corruption and bank risk-taking: Evidence from emerging economies," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 122-148.
    19. E. Tsanana & X. Chapsa & C. Katrakilidis, 2016. "Is growth corrupted or bureaucratic? Panel evidence from the enlarged EU," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(33), pages 3131-3147, July.
    20. Charles W. Calomiris & Christopher Hanes, 1994. "Historical Macroeconomics and American Macroeconomic History," NBER Working Papers 4935, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N11 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:10479. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.