Papers in English monetary history /

This is a most useful collection of articles on banking and monetary history which are not easily accessible to students. The institutional workings of the English banking system in the first quarter of the nineteenth century are illustrated by Professor Ashton's essay on the use of bills of exchange as a common means of payment in Lancashire, and by the lively correspondence of Marianne Thornton on the fate of the bank of Pole, Thornton and Co. in the crisis of 1825. Two other articles are concerned with the developments of monetary theory in this period: Professor Fetter reassesses the Bullion Report and shows Ricardo's lack of influence upon it; Professor Sayers provides an interesting appraisal of Ricardo as a monetary theorist and indicates the longer-run influence of his thinking on the legislation of 1844. Mr. Horsefield's papers cover both institutional and theoretical developments. The problems of the regulation of credit creation are examined both in the emergence of practical rule-of-thumb guides for bankers and in the development from the late eighteenth century onwards of schools of monetary theorists whose variety is too often concealed under the titles of Banking and Currency Schools. He again dovetails institutional practices and contemporary theoretical explanations in analysing the background to the 1844 Act. Finally there is an important trio of papers covering the period from 1844 to 1914.

rpm 30/04/2018

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