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An important work on banking and money which was produced in reaction to the crisis of 1797 when the Bank of England suspended cash payments due to the costs of the wars against France. It has an equally important introduction by… more

This work began as a paper read before the members of Congress in 1876. The later printed edition also includes a section from Macaulay’s History of England on cheap coinage.

The 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was the last edition which appeared before the First World War destroyed the old liberal order in Europe. The next edition, the 12th, reproduced the 11th edition with the addition of 4… more

A collection of Sumner’s writing on money and banking with a reprint of the 1810 British *Report on Bullion”.

A four volume set edited by the Editor of the Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin in New York city.

Laughlin states in the introduction that his aim is “to present only the facts bearing on the experiments of the United States with metallic money. No special attention, therefore, has been devoted to the theory of bimetallism or to… more

When Walter Bagehot wrote Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market, in 1873, he did the unthinkable: In language as fresh and clear today as it was over 100 years ago, he respectfully dissected the Bank of England’s… more

Jevons’s formative 1875 classic work came into print at the height of interest in gold, silver, and international monetary standards. Of particular interest are the clear discussions of Gresham’s Law (Ch. VIII), competitively… more

An analysis of money and banking from the free banking perspective, i.e. by privately owned banks which issue their own currency.

Another copy of this book can be found in HTML format at our sister website Econlib.

As a result of Peel’s Bank Act of 1844 and the discovery of gold in California in 1848 a dramatic increase in the amount of gold entered into circulation. Richard Cobden translated an expanded version of Chevalier’s essay in order to… more

Cobbett wrote the first volume of 28 Letters while in prison for two years (1810-11) for opposing the flogging of some militia men. It is a history of how Britain funded the war effort against Napoleon by increasing the national… more

A classic book by one of America’s greatest mathematical economists. Fisher states in the introduction that “The purpose of this book is to set forth the principles determining the purchasing power of money and to apply those… more

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… more

The second of two important collections of early economics works made by McCulloch. This volume deals with coins and coinage, the export of gold and silver, and the history of coinage in Scotland, Ireland, England, and ancient Greece… more

This is a defense of the theory and practice of free banking, i.e. the competitive issue of money by private banks as opposed to the centralised and monopolised issuance of currency under a system of central banking.

The Theory of Money and Credit opened new economic vistas. It integrated monetary theory into the main body of economic analysis for the first time, providing fresh new insights into the nature of money and its role in the economy.… more

In a rather grumpy “advertisement” Senior tells us that he rather unwillingly had to give a formal lecture as Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University and have it published. The books contains a lecture on the transmission… more

This is an 80 page encyclopedia article on money and banking which includes a discussion of gold and silver backed money, paper money, private banks, and a brief history of banking in England, France, Scotland, Ireland, and the US.