The Origins and Development of Financial Markets and Institutions From the Seventeenth Century to the Present
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface and acknowledgments
- 1 Financial innovations and crises: The view backwards from Northern Rock
- 2 An economic explanation of the early Bank of Amsterdam, debasement, bills of exchange and the emergence of the first central bank
- 3 With a view to hold: The emergence of institutional investors on the Amsterdam securities market during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
- 4 Was John Law's System a bubble? The Mississippi Bubble revisited
- 5 Sir George Caswall vs. the Duke of Portland: Financial contracts and litigation in the wake of the South Sea Bubble
- 6 The bell jar: Commercial interest rates between two revolutions, 1688–1789
- 7 Comparing the UK and US financial systems, 1790–1830
- 8 Natural experiments in financial reform in the nineteenth century: The Davis and Gallman analysis
- 9 Regulatory changes and the development of the US banking market, 1870–1914: A study of profit rates and risk in national banks
- 10 Anticipating the stock market crash of 1929: The view from the floor of the stock exchange
- 11 The development of “non-traditional” open market operations: Lessons from FDR's silver purchase program
- 12 The interwar shocks to US–Cuban trade relations: A view through sugar company stock price data
- 13 Central bank reaction functions during the inter-war gold standard: A view from the periphery
- 14 When do stock market booms occur? The macroeconomic and policy environments of twentieth century booms
- 15 Lessons from history for the twenty-first century
- Index
- References
7 - Comparing the UK and US financial systems, 1790–1830
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface and acknowledgments
- 1 Financial innovations and crises: The view backwards from Northern Rock
- 2 An economic explanation of the early Bank of Amsterdam, debasement, bills of exchange and the emergence of the first central bank
- 3 With a view to hold: The emergence of institutional investors on the Amsterdam securities market during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
- 4 Was John Law's System a bubble? The Mississippi Bubble revisited
- 5 Sir George Caswall vs. the Duke of Portland: Financial contracts and litigation in the wake of the South Sea Bubble
- 6 The bell jar: Commercial interest rates between two revolutions, 1688–1789
- 7 Comparing the UK and US financial systems, 1790–1830
- 8 Natural experiments in financial reform in the nineteenth century: The Davis and Gallman analysis
- 9 Regulatory changes and the development of the US banking market, 1870–1914: A study of profit rates and risk in national banks
- 10 Anticipating the stock market crash of 1929: The view from the floor of the stock exchange
- 11 The development of “non-traditional” open market operations: Lessons from FDR's silver purchase program
- 12 The interwar shocks to US–Cuban trade relations: A view through sugar company stock price data
- 13 Central bank reaction functions during the inter-war gold standard: A view from the periphery
- 14 When do stock market booms occur? The macroeconomic and policy environments of twentieth century booms
- 15 Lessons from history for the twenty-first century
- Index
- References
Summary
Liam Brunt, the author of a recent and otherwise admirable article on English country banks as venture-capital firms during the first industrial revolution, states, “We have known for a long time that the English financial market was sophisticated and far in advance of that of any other country.” This is a pretty strong claim to make without giving more than cursory examination to what was happening in other countries.
We have been told for such a long time what Brunt says we know that we might think we know it without actually knowing it. Perhaps repetition is not always the mother of learning. For some time, a number of scholars (referred to below) have been studying the early US financial system. They find that it developed very rapidly in the early decades of US national history, and suggest that this financial development might help us to understand more fully the rapid economic growth of the US that, in almost all accounts comparing the two countries, exceeded that of the UK almost all of the time. One way to find out whether what we think is right is to make an explicit and detailed comparison of the UK and US financial systems. That is what I attempt here for the period 1790 to 1830, when the modern US financial system was created and grew, and when many think they know the contemporaneous UK financial system was far in advance of that of any other country.
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- The Origins and Development of Financial Markets and InstitutionsFrom the Seventeenth Century to the Present, pp. 209 - 240Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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