Contemporary observers viewed the recession that began in the summer of 1929 as nothing extraordinary. Recent analyses have shown that the subsequent large deflation was econometrically forecastable, implying that a driving force in the depression was the high expected real interest rates faced...

The establishment of a centralized government bureaucracy to collect taxes is regarded as one of the essential features of a modern economy. Britain has long been regarded as a pioneer, creating an efficient tax-collecting bureaucracy over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the other...

This paper examines fifteen historical episodes of stock market crashes and their aftermath in the United States over the last one hundred years. Our basic conclusion from studying these episodes is that financial instability is the key problem facing monetary policy makers and not stock market...

We reinterpret the commonly held view in the U.S. that France, by following a policy from 1965 to 1968 of deliberately converting their dollar holdings into gold helped perpetuate the collapse of the Bretton Woods International Monetary System. We argue that French international monetary policy...

Contemporary bank governance is criticized for manager-dominated (insider) boards of directors, but from the beginning of the nineteenth century, bank presidents appear also to have operated as chairmen of the boards of directors. However, the managers were constrained by a variety of rules that...

This essay provides an historical background for understanding the statistics on veterans that will appear in the millennial edition of the Historical Statistics of the United States. It describes changes in the number of veterans, and in the benefits provided by governments to veterans, from...

This paper argues that the banking crises in the United States in the early 1930s were similar to the ?twin crises? -- banking and balance of payments crises -- which have occurred in developing countries in recent years. The downturn that began in 1929 undermined banks that had made risky loans...

To cover fully the economics of war would require encyclopedia unto itself. Here I will provide brief introductions to four questions: (1) to what extent did economic forces cause America's wars, (2) after going to war, how has the United States managed the reallocation of resources, (3) how has...