Gary Becker's paper about free banking written in 1956 was originally intended as a reaction to the 100-percent reserve proposals that were then popular at the University of Chicago. Today the original paper clearly illustrates how considerably our views and theories about free banking have...

We use the demise of silver-based standards in the 19th century to explore price dynamics when a commodity-based money ceases to function as a global unit of account. We develop a general equilibrium model of the global economy with gold and silver money. Calibration of the model shows that...

This paper uses the unique institutional setting of Swiss cantons from 1872 to 1881 to study the note-issuing behavior of private banks in a free banking system. I find that these banks over-issue notes, in contrast to recent literature on free banking in the United States in the 19th century...