Colonial Virginia's legislature introduced an inside paper money into its domestic economy that was, at that time, primarily a barter economy without any government or bank-issued inside paper monies in circulation. I decompose Virginia's paper money into its expected real-asset present value, risk discount and transaction premium. The value of Virginia's paper money was determined primarily by its real-asset present value. The transaction premium was small. Positive risk discounts occurred in years when monetary troubles were suspected, namely worries that the government would not redeem the paper money as promised. Counterfeiting, however, was not one of these worries. The legislature had the tools and used them effectively to mitigate the effects of counterfeiting on the value of its paper money. Colonial Virginia's paper money was not a fiat currency, but a barter asset, with just enough transaction premium to make it the preferred medium of exchange for local transactions. It functioned like a zero-coupon bond and traded below face value due to time-discounting, not depreciation.

This article uses historical US inflation data covering over two centuries to examine the impact of the establishment of the US Federal Reserve on average US inflation and inflation uncertainty. We find that the founding of the Fed is associated with higher average US inflation and lower inflation uncertainty. Critically, these results are not driven by the post-1980 period, where the Fed policy is characterised by the dual mandate. Other important results are that the gold standard period is associated with both lower inflation and inflation uncertainty, and that banking and stock market crises are a positive determinant of inflation uncertainty and perhaps inflation. World Wars I and II and the US Civil War are associated with both higher inflation and higher inflation uncertainty. In addition, we find that the central bank has responded to increasing inflation uncertainty in a stabilising manner in support of the Holland hypothesis.

Geneva is host to the most ancient and venerable private banks of Switzerland, but not much is known about the circumstances in which the city allegedly developed an early competitive advantage in wealth management. Using an extraordinary qualitative source (Jacques Mirabaud's papers, and especially his memoirs), this article outlines the microstructure of Genevan private banking at the time of its emergence in the early nineteenth century. It finds that in those years, wealth managers’ ‘raw material’ did not consist of foreign capital, but of a remarkably abundant stock of domestic capital. Financial and social factors were intertwined in producing a very hierarchical division of labour in the origination and distribution of international sovereign loans.

Despite its importance as a financial centre, the historical literature dedicated to the Swiss financial industry remains scarce. Analyses focusing on cantons and cities of the country are even more limited in number. This is unfortunate and is, in all likelihood, linked to the reluctance of financial institutions to share information in a country where banking secrecy has been at the core of the past success of these institutions. Despite this willingness to share as little as possible, some archival funds have gradually become available, most notably after businesses went bankrupt, changed hands, or simply disappeared. The present article relies on these sources to analyse the evolution of the Geneva stock exchange during the interwar period, which saw a gradual decline of its activity. Independent brokers strived to keep their oligopoly over banks. At the same time, Swiss German banks tried to penetrate the canton-controlled marketplace by using their federal rights and strength to become unavoidable actors. They could ultimately help local bankers gain direct access to the Geneva stock exchange, obliterating the power of brokers who were left with no other choice than to appeal to the Canton of Geneva to defend their position.

A project to build a comprehensive database of the Bank of France's published accounts covering its entire history was launched in 2001 with the support of the Bank's Mission Historique. This article introduces its main outcome: a dataset based on the weekly balance sheets – the so-called situations hebdomadaires – covering more than a century and a half of history from 1840 to 1998. After a brief outline of the historical evolution of the Bank's legal status and a description of the publication outlets for the data, the article pays special attention to the issues of transparency and accountability. For that purpose, it reconstructs on the basis of archival records the debate over the disclosure of the Bank's figures (what to publish, how frequently) that took place, both within the Bank and between the Bank and the government, at various turning points in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Finally, the article explains how the presentation of the situations changed over time, paying special attention to the impact of World Wars I and II. The full database with metadata information is attached to the electronic version of this article and downloadable as an Excel file from the FHR website, together with an extensive review of the literature on the history of the Bank of France.