Review

To put in historical perspective the issue of banks’ declining role in lending, this article examines the nature of bank lending in the late 19th century and why banks remained the dominant intermediaries, even when disadvantaged by regulation and challenged by competitors.

Commentary on "Were Banks Special Intermediaries in Late Nineteenth Century America?" by Eugene N. White.

This article uses aggregate bank balance sheet data to investigate systematic differences in the financial makeup and activities of universal and specialized banks. By explicitly comparing British and German banks, it takes steps toward quantifying the possible disparity in financial-system growth effects over the decades leading up to World War I.

Commentary on "Banking Systems and Economic Growth: Lessons from Britain and Germany in the Pre-World War I Era" by Caroline Fohlin.

The article develops the argument that the common element in all the problems of Britain’s first return to gold arose from the pressures of coping with vastly increased informational uncertainties within the existing structure of English institutions.

Commentary on "The Financial Crisis of 1825 and the Restructuring of the British Financial System" by Larry Neal.

This article explores the U.S. financial system that emerged virtually at the beginning of the nation’s history. The author emphasizes the mutual support between the banking system, which has been well studied by financial historians, and securities markets, which have been relatively neglected.

Commentary on "U.S. Securities Markets and the Banking System, 1790-1840" by Richard Sylla.

The authors argue that a closer examination of the history of the Suffolk Banking System calls into question the conclusion that unfettered competition in the provision of payments services can—and, in the absence of government intervention, likely will—produce an efficient payments system.

Commentary on "Lessons from a Laissez-Faire Payments System: The Suffolk Banking System (1825-58)" by Arthur J. Rolnick, Bruce D. Smith, and Warren E. Weber.

The Federal Reserve recently has been reexamining the appropriateness of its role in processing checks and automated clearinghouse payments. To provide a more complete background for these deliberations, this article examines the validity of arguments for the Fed’s initial entry into its payment activities.

Commentary on "Did the Fed's Founding Improve the Efficiency of the U.S. Payments System?" by R. Alton Gilbert.

The author outlines the creation of two dataset: The first involves the encoding of data from original bank Reports of Condition and Reports of Earnings, Expenses, and Dividends (i.e., Call Reports) of about 6,500 state- and nationally chartered Federal Reserve member banks in existence between 1929 and 1935. The second involves the collection of bank-structure data, including mergers, acquisitions, and failures, for this same time period.