James Watt's 1769 patent is widely supposed to have stood in the way of the development of high-pressure steam technology until it finally expired in 1800. We dispute this popular claim. We show that, although it is true that high-pressure steam technology developed only after the expiration of...

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Scotland had a stable financial system. Its stability arose from the pressure that private banks, which had the right to issue bank notes, placed on each other to behave prudently. Unlike in England, the Scottish banking system had no central...

Intro -- _Hlk488832294 -- __DdeLink__3072_333543986 -- Figure 1 Spending equilibrium: free banking -- Figure 2 Quarterly value of Fedwire transactions and nominal GDP (1992 = 100) -- Figure 3 US CPI (average 1982-84 = 100), US nominal GDP (million of dollars) -- The authors -- Foreword --...