This article reconstructs the history of mutual assistance among Federal Reserve Banks. We present data on accommodation operations through which Reserve Banks mutualized gold reserves in emergency situations between 1913 and 1960. Reserve sharing was important in response to liquidity crises and bank runs. Such cooperation was essential for the cohesion of the U.S. monetary union. But fortunes could change, with emergency recipients of gold becoming providers. Because imbalances did not endlessly grow, instead narrowing when region-specific shocks subsided, mutual assistance created only limited tensions. These findings speak to the current debate over TARGET2 balances in Europe.

This article uses a new dataset of 330 slaving voyages to examine terms of credit issued for British American slave sales between 1755 and 1807. It shows that credit terms consistently varied between American colonies, and that slave ship captains considered these differences when electing where to land enslaved Africans. Our dataset also shows that credit terms were highly erratic, especially in the last quarter of the century, contributing to both surges and collapses in the slave trade to individual colonies, and in the trade as a whole. Four such instances are examined in detail to show that instability in credit terms played an important and hitherto unacknowledged role in the volume and direction of Britain's trans-Atlantic slave trade in the second one-half of the eighteenth century.

Over time, international trade expanded beyond the reach of an individual's personal networks. How was long-distance trade among strangers financed without using banks? I argue that the joint liability rule enabled the medieval bill of exchange to become a major form of payment and credit in the early modern period which in turn supported an unparalleled expansion of trade. This article empirically examines the role that joint liability played in ameliorating fundamental information problems in long-distance trade finance.

In the eighteenth century, European embassies in the Ottoman Empire started selling exemption licenses called berats, which granted non-Muslim Ottomans tax exemptions and the option to use European law. I construct a novel price panel for British and French licenses based on primary sources. The evidence reveals that prices were significantly high and varied across countries. Agents acquired multiple berats to enhance their legal options, which they exploited through strategic court switching. By the early 1800s, berat holders had driven other groups from European-Ottoman trade.

This article explores the development of market integration within the Baltic Sea region and with England, from the 1840s to the late 1880s. It exploits two new datasets on grain prices. The degree of market integration is estimated using a wavelet variant of dynamic factor analysis that takes account of both time and distance. Additionally, we use the London corn market as the benchmark for the degree of market integration. Our results show that the role of distance disappeared in the wheat and rye, but not in the oats and barley trade, as the Baltic Sea Region became integrated into the Atlantic economy.

Landschaften were cooperative mortgage associations that emerged in Prussia after the Seven Years War (1756–1763) to support the Prussian landed nobility. Landschaften issued covered mortgage bonds, called Pfandbriefe, which helped re-capitalize the Prussian estates. Relying on mortgage data for 554 estates, this article provides a detailed look at one of these institutions—the Landschaft of East Prussia. The article offers insights into the self-selection of participants and the distribution of credit. It also gives a quantitative assessment of the economic effects of the Landschaften with respect to ownership patterns and estate size.

We use a novel data set spanning 1820–1910 to assess the factors leading to the creation of formal bank supervisory institutions across American states. We show that it took more than a century for all states to create separate agencies tasked with monitoring the safety and soundness of banks. State legislatures initially pursued cheaper regulatory alternatives, such as double liability laws; however, banking distress at the state level as well as the structural shift from note-issuing to deposit-taking commercial banks and competition with national banks propelled policymakers to adopt costly and permanent supervisory institutions.

The locomotive industry was one of the relatively sophisticated “high tech” sectors in which Italy, a late industrializer, was successful before 1913. Using technical data on the performance of different vintages of locomotives, we construct a new industry-level index of technical change. We also study the impact of different policy instruments (import duties, non-tariff trade barriers, and other discretionary interventions) in shaping the development of the industry. Our reassessment reveals not only the sound technological performance of Italian locomotives and successful industry growth, but also the critical role played by non-tariff barriers for the development of the industry.

I utilize data from the Civil War income tax to calculate the income shares of the top 1 and 0.1 percent of the population in the United States in the late 1860s—extending Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez's series back in time. As we will see, income inequality during this period represents a low comparable to the late 1970s.

This review article examines the development of state capacity—the extractive and productive power of states— in European history. To explain the historical evolution of state capacity, I focus on the role of political innovations. I relate state capacity improvements to long-run economic growth and the establishment of twentieth-century welfare states. The article concludes with historical lessons for developing nations today.