All Outputs (20)
Crowding in during the Seven Years’ War (2024)
Journal Article
We present a financial history of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) using a new dataset derived from the Bank of England minutes. We argue that the war and the associated actions of the Bank of England led to a transformation of the financial system.... Read More about Crowding in during the Seven Years’ War.
On the economics of cross-border reparation payments: The case for a bank of international reparations (2024)
Journal Article
This essay considers the challenge of ensuring that international reparation payments are effective in benefiting the recipient countries of the reparations. In order to ensure that these financial flows provide long-term benefit to the recipient eco... Read More about On the economics of cross-border reparation payments: The case for a bank of international reparations.
Banks are different: Why bank-based versus market-based lending is a false dichotomy (2024)
Journal Article
This paper introduces modern readers to ‘banking theory’, that is, to the understanding of the banking system that was held by academics and practitioners in the early years of the twentieth century. This theory contrasts with the theoretic framework... Read More about Banks are different: Why bank-based versus market-based lending is a false dichotomy.
Bearing risk: Why 'derisking' finance is an oxymoron (2023)
Digital Artefact
Crowding in during the Seven Years’ War (2022)
Preprint / Working Paper
We present a detailed study of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) using a new dataset based on the Bank of England minutes. We argue that the war and associated Bank of England actions led to a transformation of the financial system. Additionally, whil... Read More about Crowding in during the Seven Years’ War.
Becoming a central bank: The development of the Bank of England's private sector lending policies during the Restriction (2021)
Journal Article
This paper studies in detail the changes that took place in the Bank of England’s Restriction era policies governing private sector lending. We find that the Bank was adapting to novel monetary circumstances, created both by the evolution of the Engl... Read More about Becoming a central bank: The development of the Bank of England's private sector lending policies during the Restriction.
Modern legal practice as the engine of inequality: An essay on Katharina Pistor’s The Code of Capital (2021)
Journal Article
This review essay of Katharina Pistor's Code of Capital summarizes her argument: legal practice is all about the design of capital assets so that their owners' interests are maximized, and so that courts will not stop these owners from taking unfair... Read More about Modern legal practice as the engine of inequality: An essay on Katharina Pistor’s The Code of Capital.
How the West India trade fostered last resort lending by the Bank of England (2021)
Preprint / Working Paper
The nature of money in a convertible currency world (2020)
Journal Article
In a world where the means of exchange is convertible into the numeraire consumption good at a fixed rate, no one wants to hold money over time – and due to convertibility there is no means by which the Friedman rule can generate deflation. This is t... Read More about The nature of money in a convertible currency world.
Repurchase agreements and the (de)construction of financial markets (2019)
Journal Article
© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The safety of repurchase agreements (repos) depends on the neoclassical premise that markets are reliable sources of liquidity; repos in practice disprove the theory by generatin... Read More about Repurchase agreements and the (de)construction of financial markets.
The Plight of Modern Markets: How Universal Banking Undermines Capital Markets (2016)
Journal Article
© 2016 Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA This paper explains the process of competitive deregulation that led both the US and the UK to embrace universal banking and to abandon the functional separation of financial activities that had long charact... Read More about The Plight of Modern Markets: How Universal Banking Undermines Capital Markets.
How to stabilize the banking system: Lessons from the pre-1914 London money market (2016)
Journal Article
Copyright © European Association for Banking and Financial History e.V. 2016. This article argues that the British financial system in the era prior to World War I provides modern policymakers with a successful model of how to stabilize the banking s... Read More about How to stabilize the banking system: Lessons from the pre-1914 London money market.
Taking asymmetric information seriously: What modern regulators can learn from the structure of the London Stock Exchange in the early twentieth century (2014)
Journal Article
© The Author(s) (2014). Key points • In the early years of the twentieth century the London Stock Exchange (LSE) had a unique structure that, this article argues, was well-designed to promote efficient and liquid securities markets because it strictl... Read More about Taking asymmetric information seriously: What modern regulators can learn from the structure of the London Stock Exchange in the early twentieth century.
Is financial regulation structurally biased to favor deregulation (2013)
Journal Article
This article finds that the financial regulatory agencies operate in an environment where regulatory actions often face legal challenge, but deregulatory actions are rarely challenged, and argues that the growing use of interpretive rules combined wi... Read More about Is financial regulation structurally biased to favor deregulation.
The legal foundations of financial collapse (2010)
Journal Article
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the consequences of the “safe harbor” provisions of the US Bankruptcy Code that were enacted from 1984 through 2005 and that protect certain financial
contracts from standard bankruptcy procedures.... Read More about The legal foundations of financial collapse.
Why inside money matters (2007)
Journal Article
This note observes that in a simple infinite horizon economy with heterogeneous endowments and a cash-in-advance constraint fiat money can be used to implement a Pareto optimum only with type-specific taxation. By contrast, if credit contracts are en... Read More about Why inside money matters.
An idealized view of financial intermediation (2007)
Journal Article
We consider an environment where the general equilibrium assumption that every agent buys and sells simultaneously is relaxed. We show that fiat money can implement a Pareto optimal allocation only if taxes are type-specific. We then consider interme... Read More about An idealized view of financial intermediation.