We document the transition from goldsmith to banker in the case of Richard Hoare and his successors and examine the operation of the London loan market during the early eighteenth century. Analysis of the financial revolution in England has focused on changes in public debt management and the interest rates paid by the state. Much less is known about the evolution of the financial system providing credit to individual borrowers. We show how this progress took time because operating a deposit bank was new and different from being a goldsmith. Learning how to use the relatively new technology of deposit banking was crucial for the bank's success and survival.

It is established historical knowledge that the Bank of Japan (1882) was modelled upon the Banque Nationale de Belgique (1850). In this article, I point out how Japan's recurrent frustration with foreign dependence nurtured a social Darwinist view of international politics and finance: Japan's capability to survive in the world was believed to be dependent on its capability to assimilate foreign knowledge and institutions. In the field of finance, Matsukata Masayoshi, Japan's most enlightened financial policy maker at the time, turned to Belgium. I explain that Matsukata was dedicated to the emulation of Belgium's financial infrastructure, in which several public institutions would each be responsible for a specific area of the credit system. I indicate how efforts to adopt Belgian institutions and banking ideas proceeded meticuluously; yet, in the end, Japanese and Belgian finance developed along quite distinct pathways.

This article assesses the extent to which bankers approached sovereign debt defaults during the interwar period according to norms established during the nineteenth century. Bankers treated postrevolutionary Mexico as a hybrid, that is, as a case of both developmental and revenue default, in Fishlow's taxonomy, in the interest of protecting the rights of bondholders generally. Their approach led them to reject the argument of US ambassador to Mexico (and former Morgan partner), Dwight W. Morrow, that a government could be financially insolvent. Bankers acted similarly during the debt crisis of the 1980s.

In the classical monetary debates, the Banking School held that notes would be equally demand-elastic whether supplied by many issuers or a single one. The Free Banking School held that notes would be less demand-elastic if supplied by a single issuer. These assertions have rarely, if ever, been subject to more stringent statistical testing. In this study the elastic properties of the note stock of the Swedish note banking system in 1880–95 is compared with those of the regime in 1904–13, when the Bank of Sweden held a note monopoly. Evidence suggests that notes did not become less elastic after monopolisation, thus lending support to the views of the Banking School.