Handbook of World Exchange Rates, 1590–1914
Handbook of World Exchange Rates, 1590–1914

Author: Markus A Denzel

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 868

ISBN-13: 1351931725

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As a world economy emerged from the 16th-17th centuries onwards, a global cashless payment system arose. This had its base in Europe, first in Italy, then in the rising regions of the north-west, with Amsterdam and then London as the central financial market. The mutual quotation of exchange rates, which provide the data tabulated and analysed here, mark the integration into a global network of all areas with significant economic potential. The primary aim of this book is to provide a compact account of the exchange rates in all these financial markets, from the late 16th century up to the First World War. This makes possible an instant conversion between the major world currencies at nearly any date within that period, while the important introduction provides the explanation and context of developments. The present handbook therefore serves as an invaluable resource for those concerned with all aspects of commercial and financial history.

Handbook of World Exchange Rates, 1590-1914
Handbook of World Exchange Rates, 1590-1914

Author: Markus A. Denzel

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 770

ISBN-13: 9780754603566

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As a world economy emerged from the 16th-17th centuries onwards, a global cashless payment system arose. This had its base in Europe, first in Italy, then in the rising regions of the north-west, with Amsterdam and then London as the central financial market. The mutual quotation of exchange rates, which provide the data tabulated and analysed here, mark the integration into a global network of all areas with significant economic potential.The primary aim of this book is to provide a compact account of the exchange rates in all these financial markets, from the late 16th century up to the First World War. This makes possible an instant conversion between the major world currencies at nearly any date within that period, while the important introduction provides the explanation and context of developments. The present handbook therefore serves as an invaluable resource for those concerned with all aspects of commercial and financial history.

Large Databases in Economic History
Large Databases in Economic History

Author: Mark Casson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-20

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1317963652

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‘Big data’ is now readily available to economic historians, thanks to the digitisation of primary sources, collaborative research linking different data sets, and the publication of databases on the internet. Key economic indicators, such as the consumer price index, can be tracked over long periods, and qualitative information, such as land use, can be converted to a quantitative form. In order to fully exploit these innovations it is necessary to use sophisticated statistical techniques to reveal the patterns hidden in datasets, and this book shows how this can be done. A distinguished group of economic historians have teamed up with younger researchers to pilot the application of new techniques to ‘big data’. Topics addressed in this volume include prices and the standard of living, money supply, credit markets, land values and land use, transport, technological innovation, and business networks. The research spans the medieval, early modern and modern periods. Research methods include simultaneous equation systems, stochastic trends and discrete choice modelling. This book is essential reading for doctoral and post-doctoral researchers in business, economic and social history. The case studies will also appeal to historical geographers and applied econometricians.

Strangers Within
Strangers Within

Author: Francisco Bethencourt

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-03-26

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 069120991X

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A comprehensive study of the New Christian elite of Jewish origin--prominent traders, merchants, bankers and men of letters--between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries The New Christian elite of Jewish origin were at the forefront of early modern globalisation from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Either forced to convert to Christianity or descended from those who were, these Iberian traders, merchants, and bankers with links to the academic world and liberal professions played a pivotal role in intercontinental trade for two centuries--only to decline, and virtually disappear as an ethnic elite, by the mid-1700s. In Strangers Within, Francisco Bethencourt offers a comprehensive study of the New Christian trading elite, describing their many achievements, innovations and migrations. Members of this new elite were instrumental in opening global trade, investing in plantations and industries and loaning money to kings, popes, cardinals, noblemen and religious orders. They lived under constant threat of the Inquisition for almost three hundred years, yet most of them stayed in the Iberian world. Others departed to create Sephardic communities in north Africa, the Ottoman Empire, northern Europe and the Americas. Drawing on new research in archives and research libraries in Lisbon, Madrid, Seville, Simancas, Rome, Florence, Antwerp, London and Lima, Bethencourt traces the international networks New Christian trading elite families built, the different religious allegiances they assumed and the wide range of places in which they carried on their business activities. He describes the prominent roles they played in Iberian and European culture: Saint Teresa de Avila had a New Christian background, as did the philosopher Spinoza. Despite their prominence, after three centuries, the New Christians disappeared as a recognizable ethnicity, finally bowing under the accumulated weight of racism and persecution.

Central Banks at a Crossroads
Central Banks at a Crossroads

Author: Michael D. Bordo

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-06-09

Total Pages: 719

ISBN-13: 131665432X

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Throughout their long history, the primary concern of central banks has oscillated between price stability in normal times and financial stability in extraordinary times. In the wake of the recent global financial crisis, central banks have been given additional responsibilities to ensure financial stability, which has sparked intense debate over the nature of their role. Bankers and policy makers face an enormous challenge finding the right balance of power between the central bank and the state. This volume is the result of an international conference held at Norges Bank (the central bank of Norway). International experts and policy makers present research and historical analysis on the evolution of the central bank. They specifically focus on four key aspects: its role as an institution, the part it plays within the international monetary system, how to delineate and limit its functions, and how to apply the lessons of the past two centuries.

Money in the Western Legal Tradition
Money in the Western Legal Tradition

Author: David Fox

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-01-28

Total Pages: 1158

ISBN-13: 0191059188

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Monetary law is essential to the functioning of private transactions and international dealings by the state: nearly every legal transaction has a monetary aspect. Money in the Western Legal Tradition presents the first comprehensive analysis of Western monetary law, covering the civil law and Anglo-American common law legal systems from the High Middle Ages up to the middle of the 20th century. Weaving a detailed tapestry of the changing concepts of money and private transactions throughout the ages, the contributors investigate the special contribution made by legal scholars and practitioners to our understanding of money and the laws that govern it. Divided in five parts, the book begins with the coin currency of the Middle Ages, moving through the invention of nominalism in the early modern period to cashless payment and the rise of the banking system and paper money, then charting the progression to fiat money in the modern era. Each part commences with an overview of the monetary environment for the historical period written by an economic historian or numismatist. These are followed by chapters describing the legal doctrines of each period in civil and common law. Each section contains examples of contemporary litigation or statute law which engages with the distinctive issues affecting the monetary law of the period. This interdisciplinary approach reveals the distinctive conception of money prevalent in each period, which either facilitated or hampered the implementation of economic policy and the operation of private transactions.

Chinese Money in Global Context
Chinese Money in Global Context

Author: Niv Horesh

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2013-12-18

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 0804788545

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Chinese Money in Global Context: Historic Junctures Between 600 BCE and 2012 offers a groundbreaking interpretation of the Chinese monetary system, charting its evolution by examining key moments in history and placing them in international perspective. Expertly navigating primary sources in multiple languages and across three millennia, Niv Horesh explores the trajectory of Chinese currency from the birth of coinage to the current global financial crisis. His narrative highlights the way that Chinese money developed in relation to the currencies of other countries, paying special attention to the origins of paper money; the relationship between the West's ascendancy and its mineral riches; the linkages between pre-modern finance and political economy; and looking ahead to the possible globalization of the RMB, the currency of the People's Republic of China. This analysis casts new light on the legacy of China's financial system both retrospectively and at present—when China's global influence looms large.

Humanitarianism in the Modern World
Humanitarianism in the Modern World

Author: Norbert Götz

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-07-23

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1108493521

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A fresh look at two centuries of humanitarian history through a moral economy approach focusing on appeals, allocation, and accounting.

The History of Money and Monetary Arrangements
The History of Money and Monetary Arrangements

Author: Thomas Marmefelt

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-08-30

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1136728252

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Today, most money is credit money, created by commercial banks. While credit can finance innovation, excessive credit can lead to boom/bust cycles, such as the recent financial crisis. This highlights how the organization of our monetary system is crucial to stability. One way to achieve this is by separating the unit of account from the medium of exchange and in pre-modern Europe, such a separation existed. This new volume examines this idea of monetary separation and this history of monetary arrangements in the North and Baltic Seas region, from the Hanseatic League onwards. This book provides a theoretical analysis of four historical cases in the Baltic and North Seas region, with a view to examining evolution of monetary arrangements from a new monetary economics perspective. Since the objective exhange value of money (its purchasing power), reflects subjective individual valuations of commodities, the author assesses these historical cases by means of exchange rates. Using theories from new monetary economics , the book explores how the units of account and their media of exchange evolved as social conventions, and offers new insight into the separation between the two. Through this exploration, it puts forward that money is a social institution, a clearing device for the settlement of accounts, and so the value of money, or a separate unit of account, ultimately results from the size of its network of users. The History of Money and Monetary Arrangements offers a highly original new insight into monetary arrangments as an evolutionary process. It will be of great interest to an international audience of scholars and students, including those with an interest in economic history, evolutionary economics and new monetary economics.

Norges Bank 1816-2016
Norges Bank 1816-2016

Author: Einar Lie

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-04-23

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0192603868

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Norges Bank has been an integrated part of Norwegian economic development from the complicated birth of the new nation-state after the Napoleonic wars to the present nouveau-richness of the Norwegian oil economy. This book traces its 200-year history, focusing on its relations with political institutions that have shaped and reshaped the bank's role since its establishment in 1816. In the first fragile years of the new nation, Norges Bank took centre stage in the discussion on how to reconstruct a collapsed monetary system, and how trust and resources should support the core financial function of the State apparatus. The financial and political role of the bank came to the fore from the late 1800s and peaked during the turbulent interwar years of the 1920s, after which the bank became the foremost defender of the monetary order and the gold standard, in bitter conflict with the emerging Labour Party. The blow that the Second World War delivered to central bank independence left the bank firmly subordinated to the Ministry of Finance. Not until 1986 was larger autonomy in monetary policy granted, and since then the bank's weight and responsibilities have continued to expand with its position as manager of the Norwegian oil fund. The bank's role has been largely defined by perceptions of what kind of financial services Norway needed, how economic policy was coordinated, and how discretionary power was distributed between the elected bodies, the executive branch, and underlying institutions with a defined mandate. The central aim of this book is to trace and explain these changes over the past two centuries.