IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/exehis/v83y2022ics0014498321000450.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unregulated and regulated free banking: Evidence from the case of Switzerland (1826–1907)

Author

Listed:
  • Herger, Nils

Abstract

This paper provides a reassessment of the free-banking history of Switzerland, which included both a period of unfettered competition (1826–1881) and one of strong banknote regulation (1881–1907). Unfettered competition between note-issuing banks gave rise to a fragmented paper-money system, with limited liquidity banknotes. To increase confidence in these notes, the federal government introduced a minimum-reserve requirement and a mutual-conversion rule in 1881. Based on a theoretical model and new empirical evidence, this paper shows that this enhanced regulation came at a cost, as it led to the overissuing of banknotes and an inelastic paper-money supply.

Suggested Citation

  • Herger, Nils, 2022. "Unregulated and regulated free banking: Evidence from the case of Switzerland (1826–1907)," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:exehis:v:83:y:2022:i:c:s0014498321000450
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eeh.2021.101423
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014498321000450
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eeh.2021.101423?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Sanches, Daniel, 2019. "Can currency competition work?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 1-15.
    2. Manfred Neldner, 2003. "Competition Necessarily Tends to Produce Excess: The Experience of Free Banking in Switzerland," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 4, pages 389-408, August.
    3. Miron, Jeffrey A, 1986. "Financial Panics, the Seasonality of the Nominal Interest Rate, and theFounding of the Fed," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 125-140, March.
    4. Stefan Gerlach & Peter Kugler, 2018. "Money demand under free banking: Switzerland 1851–1906," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 154(1), pages 1-8, December.
    5. Bagehot, Walter, 1873. "Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number bagehot1873.
    6. Klein, Benjamin, 1974. "The Competitive Supply of Money," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 6(4), pages 423-453, November.
    7. Xavier Freixas & Jean-Charles Rochet, 2008. "Microeconomics of Banking, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262062704, December.
    8. Arthur J. Rolnick & Warren E. Weber, 1985. "Banking instability and regulation in the U.S. free banking era," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 9(Sum).
    9. F. Ritzmann, 1996. "Schweizerische Notenbanken im 19. Jahrhundert und Free Banking: Diskussionsbeitrag zu M. NELDNER, Bankenfreiheit und Noten-Überemission," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 132(II), pages 197-201, June.
    10. Kahn, James A, 1985. "Another Look at Free Banking in the United States [New Evidence on the Free Banking Era]," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 881-885, September.
    11. Baltensperger,Ernst & Kugler,Peter, 2017. "Swiss Monetary History since the Early 19th Century," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107199309.
    12. Manfred Neldner, 2003. "Competition Necessarily Tends to Produce Excess: The Experience of Free Banking in Switzerland," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 4(3), pages 389-408, August.
    13. Hugh Rockoff, 1991. "Lessons from the American Experience with Free Banking," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Forrest Capie & Geoffrey E. Wood (ed.), Unregulated Banking, chapter 3, pages 73-129, Palgrave Macmillan.
    14. Economopoulos, Andrew J, 1988. "Illinois Free Banking Experience," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 20(2), pages 249-264, May.
    15. Rolnick, Arthur J. & Weber, Warren E., 1984. "The causes of free bank failures : A detailed examination," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 267-291, November.
    16. Manfred Neldner, 1996. "Bankenfreiheit und Noten-Überemission MCCULLOCH, LONGFIELD, der Schweizer Franken und die "small note mania" in Schottland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 132(II), pages 177-195, June.
    17. Ernst Juerg Weber, 1988. "Currency Competition in Switzerland, 1826‐1850," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(3), pages 459-478, August.
    18. Rockoff, Hugh, 1974. "The Free Banking Era: A Reexamination," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 6(2), pages 141-167, May.
    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. Rebecca Stuart, 2022. "160 Years of aggregate supply and demand in Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 158(1), pages 1-14, December.

    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. Nils Herger, 2019. "Unregulated and regulated free banking. The case of Switzerland reinterpreted," Working Papers 19.06, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    2. Nils Herger, 2021. "Regulated free banking in Switzerland (1881–1907)," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 157(1), pages 1-12, December.
    3. Alexander Fink, 2014. "Free banking as an evolving system: The case of Switzerland reconsidered," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 27(1), pages 57-69, March.
    4. Gary Gorton, 1993. "Reputation Formation in Early Bank Debt Markets," NBER Working Papers 4400, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Michael D. Bordo, 2017. "Currency competition in Switzerland," Aussenwirtschaft, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science, Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economics Research, vol. 68(01), pages 101-108, December.
    6. Hugh Rockoff, 1991. "Lessons from the American Experience with Free Banking," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Forrest Capie & Geoffrey E. Wood (ed.), Unregulated Banking, chapter 3, pages 73-129, Palgrave Macmillan.
    7. 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.
    8. Gersbachd, Hans, 1998. "Liquidity Creation, Efficiency, and Free Banking," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 91-118, January.
    9. William N. Butos, 1986. "The Knowledge Problem under Alternative Monetary Regimes," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 5(3), pages 849-876, Winter.
    10. Eduardo A. Morón, 1992. "La demanda por múltiples monedas: un enfoque de portafolio," Apuntes. Revista de ciencias sociales, Fondo Editorial, Universidad del Pacífico, vol. 19(31), pages 19-28.
    11. Eugene N. White, 2011. ""To Establish a More Effective Supervision of Banking": How the Birth of the Fed Altered Bank Supervision," NBER Working Papers 16825, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Matthew Jaremski, 2010. "Free Bank Failures: Risky Bonds versus Undiversified Portfolios," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(8), pages 1565-1587, December.
    13. Lawrence H. White, 2022. "The private mint in economics: evidence from the American gold rushes," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 75(1), pages 3-21, February.
    14. Jeremy Atack & Matthew S. Jaremski & Peter L. Rousseau, 2014. "Did Railroads Make Antebellum U.S. Banks More Sound?," NBER Chapters, in: Enterprising America: Businesses, Banks, and Credit Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 149-178, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Gary Gorton, "undated". "The Enforceability of Private Money Contracts, Market Efficiency, and Technological Change," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 19-90, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    16. Marcel Canoy & Machiel van Dijk & Jan Lemmen & Ruud de Mooij & Jürgen Weigand, 2001. "Competition and stability in banking," CPB Document 15.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    17. Ricardo de O. Cavalcanti & Andres Erosa & Ted Temzelides, 1999. "Private Money and Reserve Management in a Random-Matching Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(5), pages 929-945, October.
    18. Michael D. Bordo & David C. Wheelock, 2010. "The promise and performance of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort 1914-1933," Working Papers 2010-036, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    19. Pierpaolo Benigno, 2023. "Monetary Policy in a World of Cryptocurrencies," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 1363-1396.
    20. Matthew Jaremski, 2013. "State Banks and the National Banking Acts: Measuring the Response to Increased Financial Regulation, 1860–1870," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(2‐3), pages 379-399, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Competitive money supply; Free banking; Note-issuing bank; Switzerland;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • N14 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: 1913-
    • N23 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    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:eee:exehis:v:83:y:2022:i:c:s0014498321000450. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622830 .

    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.