Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T15:14:36.488Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Political Economy of Banking Regulation, 1864–1933

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Eugene Nelson White
Eugene Nelson White
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The laws and regulations that shaped the structure of the banking industry from the Civil War to the Great Depression were strongly influenced by the banking community. In this period legal constraints on banks were weakened by competition between state and federal regulators trying to increase membership in their banking systems. The elimination of regulation was not completed, however, because the politically most powerful group in the industry, the unit banks, had an interest in preserving some regulations.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-First Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 33 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Studies of the development of American money and capital markets include: Davis, Lance, “The Investment Market, 1870–1914: The Evolution of a National Market,” this JOURNAL, 25 (09 1965), 355–99;Google ScholarSylla, Richard E., The American Capital Market, 1846–1914 (New York, 1975);Google ScholarJames, John A., Money and Capital Markets in Postbellum America (Princeton, 1978);Google ScholarKeehn, Richard H., “Market Power and Bank Lending: Some Evidence from Wisconsin, 1870–1900,” this JOURNAL, 40 (03 1980), 45–52.Google Scholar

2 For a more detailed description of state and federal banking regulations, see White, Eugene Nelson, The Regulation and Reform of American Banking, 1900–1929 (Princeton, forthcoming), Chap. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Quoted in Sylla, The American Capital Market, p. 71.Google Scholar

4 James, Money and Capital Markers, pp. 233–34.Google Scholar

5 Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency (Washington, D.C., 1895).Google Scholar

6 Data on the national banks came from the Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency (Washington, D.C., various years).Google Scholar The series on state banks was obtained from Barnett, George, State Banks and Trust Companies (Washington, D.C., 1910).Google Scholar

7 Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency (Washington, D.C., 1896), pp. 103–04.Google Scholar

8 Fisher, Gerald C., American Banking Structure (New York, 1968), pp. 27–28.Google Scholar

9 Welldon, Samuel A., Digest of State Banking Statutes (Washington, D.C., 1909).Google Scholar

10 Federal Reserve Bulletin (Washington, D.C., 11 1928), pp. 778–805.Google Scholar

11 Stigler, George, “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics, 2 (Spring 1971), 3–21;Google ScholarPeltzman, Sam, “Toward a More General Theory of Regulation,” Journal of Law and Economics, 19 (08 1976), 221–40.Google Scholar

12 Kemmerer, Edwin W., “New Jersey Banking, 1902–1927,” Journal of Industry and Finance (05 1928), 28–30.Google Scholar

13 Southworth, Shirley D., Branch Banking in the United States (New York, 1928), pp. 36–37.Google Scholar

14 Hirschleifer, Jack, “Comment,” Journal of Law and Economics, 14 (08 1976), 241–44;Google Scholar and McKenzie, Richard B. and Macaulay, Hugh H., “A Bureaucratic Theory of Regulation,” Public Choice, 35 (1980), 297–313.Google Scholar

15 Robertson, Ross M., The Comptroller and Bank Supervision: A Historical Appraisal (Washington, D.C., 1968), pp. 101–05.Google Scholar

16 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Banking and Monetary Statistics, 1914–1941 (Washington, D.C., 1943), p. 297.Google Scholar

17 Bradford, Frederick A., The Legal Status of Branch Banking in the United States (New York, 1940).Google Scholar

18 Quoted in Southworth, Branch Banking, pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., pp. 71–72.

20 Ibid., p. 17.

21 Burns, Helen M., The American Banking Community and New Deal Banking Reforms, 1933–1935 (Westport, Connecticut, 1974), chapters 3 and 4.Google Scholar

22 White, Eugene N., “State-Sponsored Insurance of Bank Deposits in the United States, 1907–1929,” this JOURNAL, 41 (09 1981).Google Scholar