IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/26663.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Private Money Production without Banks

Author

Listed:
  • Gary B. Gorton

Abstract

I test the Dang, Gorton, and Holmström (2018) (DGH) theory that the optimal design of private money is debt backed by debt. I do this in the context of English inland bills of exchange (where all parties to the bill were in England), which were used as a medium of exchange during the Industrial Revolution in the north of England in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. These bills circulated via indorsements, committing each indorser’s personal wealth to back the bill. A sample of bills from the period 1762-1850 is studied to determine how frequently they changed hands (liquidity/velocity) and to determine how their credibility was established. Some bills were backed by banks and others by the joint liability of indorsers only. I test the DGH theory by asking: Were bank-backed bills more liquid than the joint liability-backed bills?

Suggested Citation

  • Gary B. Gorton, 2020. "Private Money Production without Banks," NBER Working Papers 26663, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26663
    Note: AP CF ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w26663.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chapman, Sydney J., 1904. "The Lancashire Cotton Industry," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number chapman1904.
    2. Santarosa, Veronica Aoki, 2015. "Financing Long-Distance Trade: The Joint Liability Rule and Bills of Exchange in Eighteenth-Century France," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 75(3), pages 690-719, September.
    3. Gorton, Gary, 1999. "Pricing free bank notes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 33-64, August.
    4. Gorton, Gary & Pennacchi, George, 1990. "Financial Intermediaries and Liquidity Creation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 49-71, March.
    5. James, John A., 2012. "Panics, payments disruptions and the Bank of England before 18261," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(3), pages 289-309, December.
    6. Bryer, R. A., 1993. "The late nineteenth-century revolution in financial reporting: Accounting for the rise of investor or managerial capitalism?," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 18(7-8), pages 649-690.
    7. Cuadras-Morató, Xavier & Rosés, Joan R., 1998. "Bills of exchange as money: sources of monetary supply during the industrialisation of Catalonia, 1844–741," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 27-47, April.
    8. Andrew Popp, 2007. "Building the market: John Shaw of Wolverhampton and commercial travelling in early nineteenth-century England," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(3), pages 321-347.
    9. Gorton, Gary, 1996. "Reputation Formation in Early Bank Note Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(2), pages 346-397, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Michael D. Bordo & William Roberds, 2022. "Central Bank Digital Currencies: An Old Tale with a New Chapter," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2022-18, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

    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. Tri Vi Dang & Gary B. Gorton & Bengt R. Holmstrom, 2019. "The Information View of Financial Crises," NBER Working Papers 26074, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Gary B. Gorton, 2016. "The History and Economics of Safe Assets," NBER Working Papers 22210, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Shambaugh, Jay C., 2006. "An experiment with multiple currencies: the American monetary system from 1838-60," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 609-645, October.
    4. Christopher Bailey & Tarique Hossain & Gary Pecquet, 2018. "Private banks in early Michigan, 1837–1884," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 12(1), pages 153-180, January.
    5. Gorton, Gary & Metrick, Andrew & Xie, Lei, 2021. "The flight from maturity," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    6. Gerald P. Dwyer & Rik Hafer, 2001. "Bank failures in banking panics: Risky banks or road kill?," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2001-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    7. Dwyer Jr., Gerald P. & Samartín, Margarita, 2009. "Why do banks promise to pay par on demand?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-169, June.
    8. Gary Gorton & Ellis W. Tallman, 2016. "How Did Pre-Fed Banking Panics End?," Working Papers (Old Series) 1603, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    9. Jaremski, Matthew & Mathy, Gabrial, 2017. "Looking Back On the Age of Checking in America, 1800-1960," MPRA Paper 78083, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Quinn, Stephen, 1997. "Goldsmith-Banking: Mutual Acceptance and Interbanker Clearing in Restoration London," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 411-432, October.
    11. Gary B. Gorton, 2019. "The Regulation of Private Money," NBER Working Papers 25891, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Gary Gorton, 2020. "The Regulation of Private Money," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(S1), pages 21-42, October.
    13. Gary Gorton, 2013. "The Development of Opacity in U.S. Banking," NBER Working Papers 19540, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Toms, J. S., 1998. "The supply of and demand for accounting information in an unregulated market: Examples from the lancashire cotton mills, 1855-1914," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 217-238, February.
    15. Gary B. Gorton, 2012. "Some Reflections on the Recent Financial Crisis," NBER Working Papers 18397, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. König, Philipp J. & Pothier, David, 2018. "Safe but fragile: Information acquisition, sponsor support and shadow bank runs," Discussion Papers 15/2018, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    17. Habib, Michel A. & Johnsen, D. Bruce & Naik, Narayan Y., 1997. "Spinoffs and Information," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 153-176, April.
    18. Michiel Bijlsma & Wouter Elsenburg & Michiel van Leuvensteijn, 2010. "Four Futures for Finance; A scenario study," CPB Document 211.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    19. Dion Bongaerts & K. J. Martijn Cremers & William N. Goetzmann, 2012. "Tiebreaker: Certification and Multiple Credit Ratings," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 113-152, February.
    20. Kris James Mitchener & Matthew Jaremski, 2014. "The Evolution of Bank Supervision: Evidence from U.S. States," NBER Working Papers 20603, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E02 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Institutions and the Macroeconomy
    • 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:26663. 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.