Australia during the second half of the nineteenth century experimented with a free banking system. However, the severe banking crisis experienced in 1893 poses a difficulty for proponents of free banking as they argue that such systems should be free from instability. We suggest that the few regulations that Australian banks faced were either not credible or had minimal impact on bank prudential behaviour. Using data on individual banks and the overall banking system, we go on to suggest that the 1893 banking crisis was the natural outcome of an unregulated environment. We also examine the role played by the colonial governments during the crisis.

This article juxtaposes two bodies of oral evidence collected in 1877–78 and 1989–91 respectively to explore the dynamics of the London Stock Exchange as a physical market. The analysis highlights the long-run continuities in the pattern, organisation and culture of trading activity. In particular, it emphasises the necessity experienced by market makers (known as jobbers) to adapt to the demands of a highly visible trading environment. More broadly, further evidence is provided of the nature and diversity of trade relationships, economic exchange and price creation.

Stock transferability and liquidity are viewed as vital characteristics of capital markets. Surprisingly, we know very little about the level of trading activity on, and liquidity of the market for, company stock during the rapid growth of the British capital market in the nineteenth century. This article attempts to shed some light on this important issue by examining the market for bank shares using trading data collected from bank archives. Our evidence suggests that trading activity and liquidity changed imperceptibly over the century. We also find that ownership structure is a major determinant of trading activity and liquidity; whereas shareholder liability regimes don't appear to affect liquidity.

Lucy Newton, Trust and virtue in English banking: the assessment of borrowers by bank managements at the turn of the nineteenth century

Much has been made of the relationships between English banks and their customers. This article aims to examine the perceptions of banks' managements and their procedures in the assessment of English and Welsh borrowing customers at the turn of the century. During this period, as banks assumed the modern corporate form, their managements attempted to impose a more formalised structure for lending decisions – one that could be standardised and applied throughout an organisation. The article examines the impact of such changes upon lending decisions, together with the information utilised in making them. It focuses upon the use of ‘subjective’ information and criteria in order to shed light upon a transitional period in banking organisation. It also considers related issues such as customer reputation; the transition from personalised to transaction banking; and the respective roles of local branches and London head offices in decision-making.

Complementarity of money means that two or more kinds of monies together fulfil the demands of the users better than they would without the existence of the other(s). In this article we study complementarity between paper monies in Sweden. We address four questions: 1. What was used as money at a macro-level (money supply) and at a micro-level (monetary remittances)? 2. What was the relative value of different monies in parallel circulation? 3. Were there seasonal variations in use and/or value of these monies? 4. Were there geographical variations in use and value? What we find is that the complementarity helped to solve the problem of providing sufficient liquidity domestically over time and space and thus contributed to the maintenance of a stable value of the currency.

The creation of the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) in 1850 marked a fundamental reform of the Belgian financial system. It clearly aimed at rendering the financial system more crisis resistant, especially by restricting the leverage of the banking sector. The NBB, which received the privilege to issue banknotes, was subject to strict rules to grant only short-term credit against collateral. The NBB took up a key role in maintaining monetary stability, especially by safeguarding the convertibility of banknotes. The NBB also took part in certain rescue operations of financial institutions. However, this was mostly on explicit demand from the finance minister and for crises concerning discount banks. It would then be an exaggeration to consider it as a lender of last resort, in the sense of taking responsibility for the stability of the financial system. This should be no surprise, given the limitations imposed by its statutes, especially the limitation to short-term credits and the strict rules on collateral, the role of the profit motive in its commercial activities and the priority for safeguarding the convertibility of banknotes.

Improved information technology and higher volume should drive orders to be concentrated in one market, lowering the costs of transactions. However, the opposite occurred during the bull market of the 1920s when rapid technological change spawned a flood of new issues. This article employs newly recovered data for 1900-33 on the volume and seat prices of regional exchanges to examine how these rivals successfully competed with the NYSE, leading to its relative decline at the zenith of the market. The history of US exchanges reveals that the tendency towards concentration of trading is periodically reversed when new industries, whose technologies are risky and unfamiliar, are more easily accommodated by existing or new rivals to the dominant exchange.

The Bank of England's ‘consultative document’ on Competition and Credit Control (C&CC) was published on 14 May 1971. It was a landmark occasion, representing a decisive break with the prior system of maintaining direct controls over bank lending to the private sector; the intention was now to achieve the monetary authorities’ objectives of policy via the operation of market mechanisms, notably adjustments in interest rates and open market operations. Although the ‘credit control’ aspect was, over the next few years, notably less successful than the encouragement of competition amongst the banks (where the London clearing banks previously had maintained a restrictive cartel with the support of the authorities), nevertheless the direction of travel towards a more liberal, market-based system, remained, despite a partial reversion towards a direct control system in the guise of the ‘corset’, introduced at the end of 1973, and finally laid to rest in June 1980.

This article investigates the impact of bank consolidations promoted by government policy, using data from pre-war Japan when the Ministry of Finance promoted bank consolidations through the Bank Law of 1927. We argue that policy-promoted consolidation had a positive effect on deposit growth, especially in the period when the financial system was unstable. On the other hand, it had a negative effect on profitability, particularly when there was no dominant bank among the participants or when more than two banks participated in the consolidation. Policy-promoted consolidation in such cases was likely to be accompanied by large organisational cost.

The article reports the results of primary research aimed at eliciting new information on the nature of the relationship between english banks and the business sector over the long period, 1920–68. Bank archives have been used to conduct a microeconomic study of lending by english commercial banks to business clients. Three sets of results are reported. First, on the basis of a sample of over four thousand individual business loans, new data are presented on the nature and duration of business loans, the purposes for which they were used, the banks' requirements regarding collateral and interest rates charged. Secondly, the parameters governing bank practice are examined through the presentation of the reasons for which one of the leading clearing banks, the midland, turned down requests for business loans from a subset of firms. Thirdly, a detailed comparison is made of the loans granted to small private firms and to larger public companies; and regression analysis is used to assess the banks' treatment of the two groups. The data are presented within the theoretical framework of english ‘transaction banking’ which, it is argued, offers a strong rationale for the reported continuity in bank practice over the long term.

This article examines the formation, function and economics of unincorporated, or private, bankers' networks in long-distance payments during the 20 years leading up to the Civil War. Using historical evidence from both the center and the periphery, I find that the private bankers' networks played an important role in the interregional circulation of currency and in the issuance and clearing of deposits and drafts. In the 1850s, as the private bankers' networks were adapted to the mobilization of long-term financial capital, their role in long-distance payments began to diminish. This pattern of specialization was reinforced by the financing of the northern government's effort in the war of the states.

Using the depositor records of Philadelphia's largest and oldest savings bank, this article reconstructs how transient workers during the late nineteenth century often used savings accounts to attain the economic goals of their migration. Displaying savings patterns that were active and short in duration, migrants seem to have used their accounts for targeted accumulation, eventually transferring their savings to family in their home country or withdrawing it before moving on. The existence of many such accounts conflicted with the ways in whıch savings bank officers and policy-makers had intended the institutions to be used, and eventually led to important changes in managerial practices. It is argued that the case of migrant savers illustrates the need to understand the institutional development of ‘popular banking’ within the context of broad historical changes in household social and economic strategies.

Savings banks were created as a means to encourage the newly created working class to save for the uncertainties of urban industrial life. This article explores the success of the Savings Bank of Glasgow, and pays particular attention to the response of savers to the financial and commercial crises of 1847 and 1857. The crisis of 1847 was shallower but longer lasting in Glasgow, while that of 1857 was greatly exacerbated by local conditions in the short term, but of little long-term importance to savers. It suggests that, in both crises, some elements of contagion may have been present but that those who panicked in 1857 were systematically different from those who did not.

This article discusses the use of private promissory notes in the sixteenth-century commercial metropolis of Antwerp. Students of financial history tend to look for first instances of financial techniques and institutions such as bills of exchange, share trading, sovereign debt and banks. However, financial innovation can also be found in the piecemeal adaptation of an older, existing technique, institution or instrument as the result of changes in the market and of demands exerted by particular groups within that economy. The outcome of this process is determined by the structure of the economy in question, its institutional arrangements and the willingness of authorities to adapt the rules.

This article explores the world of informal financial transactions and informal networks in pre-industrial France. Often considered merely as simple daily transactions made to palliate a lack of cash in circulation and to smooth consumption, the examination of private transactions reveals not only that they served various purposes, including productive investments, but also that they proved to be dynamic. The debts they incurred helped to smooth consumption but also helped to make investments. Some lenders were more prominent than others, although no one really dominated the informal market. This article also compares informal transactions with formal ones through the study of probate inventories and notarial records respectively. It compares these two credit circuits, their similarities and different characteristics, and their various networks features. The debts incurred in the notarial credit market were more substantial but did not serve a different purpose than in the informal market. Here too, the biggest lenders did not monopolise the extension of capital. Perhaps the most striking result lies in the fact that the total volume of exchange between the informal credit market and the notarial credit market (after projection) was similar.

Framing tulipmania in terms of sequestered capital – capital whose quantities, usages and future yields are hidden from market participants – offers a richer and more straightforward explanation for this famous financial bubble than extant alternatives. Simply put, the underground planting of the tulip bulbs in 1636 blindfolded seventeenth-century Dutch speculators regarding the planted quantities and their development and future yields. The price boom began in mid November 1636, coinciding with the time of planting. The price collapse occurred in the first week of February 1637, coinciding with the time of bulb sprouting – signaling bulb quantities, development and future yields. Also consistent with our explanation is the initial price collapse location, in the Dutch city of Haarlem, where temperature and geography favored early sprouting and sprout visibility.

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.