Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T10:50:24.228Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Demise of Central Banking and the Domestic Exchanges: Evidence from Antebellum Ohio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Jane Knodell
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Vermont, Old Mill, P.O. Box 54160, Burlington, VT, 05405-4160.

Abstract

This article describes the institutional transition from a centrally managed interregional payments system to an unmanaged, decentralized one after President Andrew Jackson's veto of the rechartering of the Second Bank of the United States, and evaluates the effect on the level and variability of exchange rates. Comparison of the reduction in specie points, driven by falling transportation and insurance costs, with the reduction in exchange rates in two Ohio cities over the period from 1830 to 1859 lends support to the article's conclusion that decentralization was one cause of higher and more volatile inland exchange rates.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Albion, Robert Greenhalgh, Square-Riggers on Schedule (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 1938.Google Scholar
Albion, Robert Greenhalgh, The Rise of New York Port 1815–1860. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1939.Google Scholar
Bank Commissioners of Ohio, Frist Annual Report to the Thirty-eighth General Assembly. 16 12 1839.Google Scholar
Berry, Thomas Senior. Western Prices before 1861. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1943.Google Scholar
Bodenhorn, Howard. “Banking and the Integration of Antebellum American Financial Markets,” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1990.Google Scholar
Bodenhorn, HowardCapital Mobility and Financial Integration in Antebellum America.” this JOURNAL 52, no. 3 (1992): 585610.Google Scholar
Bodenhorn, Howard, and Rockoff, Hugh. “Regional Interest Rates in Antebellum America.” In Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History, edited by Goldin, Claudia and Rockoff, Hugh, 159–87. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Catterall, Ralph C. H., The Second Bank of the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1902.Google Scholar
Clark, John G., The Grain Trade in the Old Northwest. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Cleveland Herald and Gazette, various dates.Google Scholar
Cole, Arthur. “The Evolution of the Foreign Exchange Market in the U.S.Journal of Economic and Business History 1 (1928/29): 384421.Google Scholar
Colwell, Stephen. The Ways and Means of Payment. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1860.Google Scholar
Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991.Google Scholar
Davis, Lance. “Comment on Paper by Sylla.” this JOURNAL 36, no. 1 (1976): 189–93.Google Scholar
Davis, L. E., and Hughes, J. R. T.. “A Dollar-Sterling Exchange, 1803–1895,” Economic History Review 13, no. 1 (1960): 5278.Google Scholar
Engerman, Stanley L.A Note on the Economic Consequences of the Second Bank of the United States.” Journal of Political Economy 78, no. 4, Part 1 (1970): 725–28.Google Scholar
Fishlow, Albert. American Railroads and the Transformation of the Antebellum Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert William. Railroads and American Economic Growth. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Garbade, Kenneth D., and Silber, William L.. “The Payment System and Domestic Exchange Rates: Technological versus Institutional Change.” Journal of Monetary Economics 5, no. 5 (1979): 122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, and Margo, Robert A.. “Wages, Prices, and Labor Markets before the Civil War.” In Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History, edited by Goldin, Claudia and Rockoff, Hugh, 67104. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Grossman, Peter A., American Express. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1987.Google Scholar
Haites, Erik F., “Ohio and Mississippi River Transportation, 1810–1860.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1969.Google Scholar
Haites, Erik F., Mak, James, and Walton, Gary M.. Western River Transportation: The Era of Early Internal Development, 1810–1860. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Hammond, Bray, Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Hatch, Alden. American Express. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1950.Google Scholar
Homer, Sidney, and Sylla, Richard. A History of Interest Rates. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Hunter, Louis C.Steamboats on the Western Rivers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949.Google Scholar
Huntington, C. C.A History of Banking and Currency in Ohio Before the Civil War. Columbus: Ohio Archeological and Historical Publications, 1915.Google Scholar
Macesich, George. “Sources of Monetary Disturbances in the United States, 1834–1845.” this JOURNAL 20, no. 3 (1960): 407–34.Google Scholar
Martin, David. “Bimetallism in the United States before 1850.” Journal of Political Economy 76, no. 3 (1968): 428–42.Google Scholar
Morrison, John H.History of American Steam Navigation. New YorkStephen Daye Press, 1858.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C.Ocean Freight Rates and Economic Development 1750–1913.” this JOURNAL 18, no. 4 (1958): 537–55.Google Scholar
Pred, Allan R.Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Rockoff, Hugh. “Money, Prices, and Banks in the Jacksonian Era.” In The Reinterpretation of American Economic History, edited by Fogel, Robert and Engerman, Stanley, 448–58. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.Google Scholar
Scheiber, Harry N.The Ohio Canal Era. A Case Study of Government and the Economy, 1820–1861. Athens: The Ohio University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Shaw, Ronald E.Erie Water West. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Sylla, RichardThe American Capital Market, 1846–1914: A Study of the Effects of Public Policy on Economic Development. New York: Arno Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Sylla, RichardForgotten Men of Money: Private Bankers in Early U.S. History.” this JOURNAL 36, no. 1 (1976): 175–88.Google Scholar
Temin, Peter. The Jacksonian Economy. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969.Google Scholar
U.S. House of Representatives. Report. No. 358, 21st Congress, 1st Session, 1830.Google Scholar