Tag Archives: Free Banking

If one searches through old historical records, one will find economists praising the success made possible by the relative freedom of the Canadian banking system. Today one would hardly find modern economists holding such views. The most recent criticism of … 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 are 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; … 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 →