Title page from The Rationale of Central Banking and the Free Banking Alternative

The Rationale of Central Banking and the Free Banking Alternative

Written as a doctoral dissertation under Friedrich Hayek at the London School of Economics in the early 1930s, the book covers the history of free banking in the 19th century and reviews the theoretical arguments both for and against the idea of free banking.

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Money & Banking

The Civil War provided the occasion for a radical change in the banking system of the whole country. The banks in the South gave their support to the secession and ceased remittances to the North, and since they had a large net liability towards the banks in the North the latter lost heavily, but…

Money & Banking

The Scottish system developed certain characteristics which early distinguished it from the systems in other countries. There was keen competition between the banks and they kept very strictly to the practice of regularly clearing each other’s notes; exchanges were made twice a week and the…

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