Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles
Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles

Author: Jesús Huerta de Soto

Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 939

ISBN-13: 1933550392

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Can the market fully manage the money and banking sector? Jesus Huerta de Soto, professor of economics at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, has made history with this mammoth and exciting treatise that it has and can again, without inflation, without business cycles, and without the economic instability that has characterised the age of government control. Such a book as this comes along only once every several generations: a complete comprehensive treatise on economic theory. It is sweeping, revolutionary, and devastating -- not only the most extended elucidation of Austrian business cycle theory to ever appear in print but also a decisive vindication of the Misesian-Rothbardian perspective on money, banking, and the law. The author has said that this is the most significant work on money and banking to appear since 1912, when Mises's own book was published and changed the way all economists thought about the subject. Its five main contributions: A wholesale reconstruction of the legal framework for money and banking, from the ancient world to modern times; An application of law-and-economics logic to banking that links microeconomic analysis to macroeconomic phenomena; A comprehensive critique of fractional-reserve banking from the point of view of history, theory, and policy; An application of the Austrian critique of socialism to central banking; The most comprehensive look at banking enterprise from the point of view of market-based entrepreneurship. Those are the main points but, in fact, this only scratches the surface. Indeed, it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this book. De Soto provides also a defence of the Austrian perspective on business cycles against every other theory, defends the 100% reserve perspective from the point of view of Roman and British law, takes on the most important objections to full reserve theory, and presents a full policy program for radical reform. It could take a decade for the full implications of this book to be absorbed but this much is clear: all serious students of these subject matters will have to master this treatise.

Bruges, Cradle of Capitalism, 1280-1390
Bruges, Cradle of Capitalism, 1280-1390

Author: James M. Murray

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-01-20

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 9780521819213

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Teeming with merchants from all over Europe, medieval Bruges provides an early model of a great capitalist city. Bruges established a sophisticated money market and an elaborate network of agents and brokers. Moreover, it promoted co-operation between merchants of various nations. In this book James Murray explores how Bruges became the commercial capital of northern Europe in the late fourteenth century. He argues that a combination of fortuitous changes such as the shift to sea-borne commerce and the extraordinary efforts of the city's population served to shape a great commercial centre. Areas explored include the political history of Bruges, its position as a node and network, the wool, cloth and gold trade and the role of women in the market. This book serves not only as a case-study in medieval economic history, but also as a social and cultural history of medieval Bruges.

A Financial History of Western Europe
A Financial History of Western Europe

Author: Charles P. Kindleberger

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-06-03

Total Pages: 558

ISBN-13: 113680577X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is the first history of finance - broadly defined to include money, banking, capital markets, public and private finance, international transfers etc. - that covers Western Europe (with an occasional glance at the western hemisphere) and half a millennium. Charles Kindleberger highlights the development of financial institutions to meet emerging needs, and the similarities and contrasts in the handling of financial problems such as transferring resources from one country to another, stimulating investment, or financing war and cleaning up the resulting monetary mess. The first half of the book covers money, banking and finance from 1450 to 1913; the second deals in considerably finer detail with the twentieth century. This major work casts current issues in historical perspective and throws light on the fascinating, and far from orderly, evolution of financial institutions and the management of financial problems. Comprehensive, critical and cosmopolitan, this book is both an outstanding work of reference and essential reading for all those involved in the study and practice of finance, be they economic historians, financial experts, scholarly bankers or students of money and banking. This groundbreaking work was first published in 1984.

Central Banking before 1800
Central Banking before 1800

Author: Ulrich Bindseil

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-12-19

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0192589938

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Although central banking is today often presented as having emerged in the nineteenth or even twentieth century, it has a long and colourful history before 1800, from which important lessons for today's debates can be drawn. While the core of central banking is the issuance of money of the highest possible quality, central banks have also varied considerably in terms of what form of money they issued (deposits or banknotes), what asset mix they held (precious metals, financial claims to the government, loans to private debtors), who owned them (the public, or private shareholders), and who benefitted from their power to provide emergency loans. Central Banking Before 1800: A Rehabilitation reviews 25 central banks that operated before 1800 to provide new insights into the financial system in early modern times. Central Banking Before 1800 rehabilitates pre-1800 central banking, including the role of numerous other institutions, on the European continent. It argues that issuing central bank money is a natural monopoly, and therefore central banks were always based on public charters regulating them and giving them a unique role in a sovereign territorial entity. Many early central banks were not only based on a public charter but were also publicly owned and managed, and had well defined policy objectives. Central Banking Before 1800 reviews these objectives and the financial operations to show that many of today's controversies around central banking date back to the period 1400-1800.

The Payment Order of Antiquity and the Middle Ages
The Payment Order of Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Author: Benjamin Geva

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 1847318665

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Examining the legal history of the order to pay money initiating a funds transfer, the author tracks basic principles of modern law to those that governed the payment order of Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Exploring the legal nature of the payment order and its underpinning in light of contemporary institutions and payment mechanisms, the book traces the evolution of money, payment mechanisms and the law that governs them, from developments in Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, Rome, and Greco-Roman Egypt, through medieval Europe and post-medieval England. Doctrine is examined in Jewish, Islamic, Roman, common and civil laws. Investigating such diverse legal systems and doctrines at the intersection of laws governing bank deposits, obligations, the assignment of debts, and negotiable instruments, the author identifies the common denominator for the evolving legal principles and speculates on possible reciprocity. At the same time he challenges the idea of 'law merchant' as a mercantile creation. The book provides an account of the evolution of payment law as a distinct cohesive body of legal doctrine applicable to funds transfers. It shows how principles of law developed in tandem with the evolution of banking and in response to changing circumstances and proposes a redefinition of 'law merchant'. The author points to deposit banking and emerging technologies as embodying a great potential for future non-cash payment system growth. However, he recommends caution in predicting both the future of deposit banking and the overall impact of technology. At the same time he expresses confidence in the durability of legal doctrine to continue to evolve and accommodate future payment system developments.

A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550
A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550

Author: Edwin S. Hunt

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999-03-28

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780521499231

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book demolishes the widely held view that the phrase 'medieval business' is an oxymoron. The authors review the entire range of business in medieval western Europe, probing its Roman and Christian heritage to discover the economic and political forces that shaped the organization of agriculture, manufacturing, construction, mining, transportation and marketing. Businessmen's responses to the devastating plagues, famines, and warfare that beset Europe in the late Middle Ages are equally well covered. Medieval businessmen's remarkable success in coping with this hostile new environment was 'a harvest of adversity' that prepared the way for the economic expansion of the sixteenth century. Two main themes run through this book. First, the force and direction of business development in this period stemmed primarily from the demands of the elite. Second, the lasting legacy of medieval businessmen was less their skillful adaptations of imported inventions than their brilliant innovations in business organization.

Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice
Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice

Author: Frederic Chapin Lane

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2020-03-24

Total Pages: 515

ISBN-13: 1421436094

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Originally published in 1985. Frederic C. Lane and Reinhold C. Mueller, in the first volume of Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, discuss Venice's economic achievement in terms of the complex system the city's inhabitants developed to manage moneys of account and coins. Money merchants of Venice developed a system whereby a premium attached to moneys of account acted as a stabilizing force and allowed merchants to engage in long-term trade. This system, according to the authors, helped establish Venice as a dominant city-state in international trade and exchange. This book outlines the development and success of this system through 1508. At the time it was first published, this book made a significant contribution to the history of money and economics by underscoring the large role that Venice played in the economic history of the West and the ascendance of capitalism as a structuring force of society.