Some economists have argued theoretically that the private minting of circulating precious metal coins would be inefficient: Due to information asymmetry, money-users would be chronically victimized by low-quality or underweight coins. An examination of experience with private mints during gold...

This paper surveys economists’ work on the theory and the history of free banking regimes. Support for free banking - a laissez-faire monetary system without a central bank, typically conceived as operating under a commodity standard - has been much rarer than support for free trade, even...