Tag Archives: Free Banking

Until now, there was no account of any episode of free banking in Belgium. I was only aware of a brief narrative in chapter 2 (by Schuler, 1992) of The Experience of Free Banking (edited by Dowd). Recently, Mardini & … Continue reading →

Among the numerous successful episodes of Free Banking, the Hong Kong episode is rarely cited as a relevant one. Not surprisingly, because the austrian economists (the free bankers) themselves seem to consider the period of free banking (1935-1964) has never … Continue reading →

The anti-free bankers sometimes rehash Hickson and Turner’s paper “Free banking gone awry: the Australian banking crisis of 1893” (2002) as a refutation of the theory of free banking while ignoring the many other successful episodes. In fact, some evidence provided … Continue reading →

Here’s some excerpts from Free Banking in Britain: Theory, Experience and Debate 1800-1845, Second Edition, by Lawrence H. White (1995). ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ “There were many competing banks; most of them were well capitalised by a large number of shareholders; no … Continue reading →

While the success of the swedish banking system from 1830 until the end of this century is of no dispute, and the banking crises were localized did not result in a general panic, there is a little dispute regarding the … Continue reading →

George A. Selgin, The Theory of Free Banking: Money Supply under Competitive Note Issue [1988] 1: Overview The U.S. Experience 1837 was, however, also the year in which increased public dissatisfaction with the charter or spoils system of bank establishment … Continue reading →

Rothbard, M. N. (1989). The Other Side of the Coin: Free Banking in Chile. Austrian Economics Newsletter (Winter), 1-4. The Law of 1860 created a free bankers’ paradise in Chile. Anyone or any group could set up a bank and … Continue reading →

Free-banking revisited: the Chilean experience 1860-1898 (Ignacio Briones 2002) The empirical evidence we report shows that during the free-banking period (period in which Chile experienced two important wars and a civil war), inflation was low and stable most of the … Continue reading →

Opponents of the fractional reserve free banking usually wonder why free banking systems no long exist today. A widely spread belief is that central banks have been established because free banking has failed to work. Central bank is not the … Continue reading →