IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/21151.html

Private Money and Money Market Integration: The Role of Payments Infrastructure in 19th Century Switzerland

Author

Listed:
  • Stuart, Rebecca
  • Kaufmann, Daniel

Abstract

Using newly collected discount rate data for six Swiss cities from 1846 to 1893, we find no evidence of increasing integration during a 30-year period of lightly regulated free banking. We attribute this to two structural issues: banks had incentives to ward off competitors by protecting their local monopolies or forming cartels, and there was always a risk (which varied across banks) that banknotes were not accepted or converted at par. We use a novel counterfactual to show that these issues increased discount rate dispersion, and argue that as a result, public regulation of payments infrastructure was necessary for money market integration.

Suggested Citation

  • Stuart, Rebecca & Kaufmann, Daniel, 2026. "Private Money and Money Market Integration: The Role of Payments Infrastructure in 19th Century Switzerland," CEPR Discussion Papers 21151, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21151
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP21151
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions
    • F45 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Macroeconomic Issues of Monetary Unions
    • N13 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: Pre-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:cpr:ceprdp:21151. 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: CEPR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cepr.org/ .

    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.