This essay looks at the bidirectional relationship between financial history and financial economics. It begins by giving a brief history of financial economics by outlining the main topics of interest to financial economists. It then documents and explains the increasing influence of financial...

Proponents of free banking argue that systems adopting their policies will be stable. In this paper, we present evidence suggesting that, in general, early joint-stock banking systems did not adopt free banking, and those that did proved to be unstable. In particular, we demonstrate that those...