Postbellum economic change in the United States required an efficient system by which capital could be transferred to areas where it was relatively scarce. In assessing the structure that evolved to meet this need, John James provides a new and convincing explanation of the forces underlying the...

This paper pools data from independent household surveys of Japanese workers roughly spanning the Taisho period (1912–1926), a time before private-business or government-provided social safety nets. First, we construct estimates of permanent and transitory income and then estimate saving...

Before the formation of the Federal Reserve, banking panics were routine events in the United States. During the most severe episodes, banks in cities across the country would often suspend or restrict the par convertibility of their demand deposit liabilities. In diagnosing the causes of the...