Bank regulation: strengthening Friedman's case for reform

Regulation

The benefits of bank deposit rate ceilings: new evidence on bank rates and risk in the 1920's

Bank deposits ; Interest ; Deposit insurance

Market disciplines as a regulator of bank risk

Banks and banking - History ; Risk ; Banks and banking ; Deposit insurance

A Proposal for Achieving High Returns on Early Childhood Development

Recommends establishing large-scale ECD programs for at-risk children as public investment in economic development. Discusses existing programs' benefits, and proposes a market-oriented approach to funding and managing endowed scholarship funds

An early childhood investment with a high public return

Early childhood education ; Education - Economic aspects

Early education's big dividends: the better public investment

Public investments in projects like new stadiums never achieve returns equal to those from early childhood education—which several small studies have assessed at 7 percent to 20 percent. Now Minnesota is testing whether scaling up can produce the same results.Early childhood education ; Early childhood education - Minnesota

Gresham's law or Gresham's fallacy?

The claim that bad money drives out good is one of the oldest and most cited in economics. Economists refer to this claim as Gresham’s law. Yet despite its seemingly universal acceptance, this claim does not warrant its status as a law. We find it has no convincing explanations and many overlooked exceptions. We propose an alternative hypothesis based on the costs of using a medium of exchange at a nonpar price: small-denomination currency undervalued at the mint tends to disappear from circulation while large-denomination currency usually circulates at premium. Examining a variety of historical episodes when market and legal prices were different, we find our “law” can explain history much better than Gresham’s.

The Suffolk Banking System reconsidered

The best-known example of a privately created and well-functioning interbank payments system is the Suffolk Banking System. Operating in New England between 1825 and 1858, it was the first regionwide net-clearing system for bank notes in the United States. Some historians portray the System as being owned and managed by a coalition of large Boston banks in order to achieve a public purpose. They argue that while the System was not particularly profitable, it maintained par circulation of bank notes throughout the region. We reconsider this history and find the public-purpose view of the Suffolk Banking System to be specious. The System was owned and operated solely by the Suffolk Bank. It was operated not to promote a common currency or any other public purpose, but to serve the private interests of the Suffolk Bank’s shareholders, which it did quite successfully.Suffolk Banking System

Gresham's law or Gresham's fallacy?

In this article, the authors argue the answer to their title depends on whether a qualifier is added to the standard version of the law that "bad money drives out good." By examining several historical episodes, they find instances where bad money (valued more at the mint than in the market) failed to drive out good money (valued less at the mint than in the market). Rolnick and Weber next explain why the common qualifier to this law, which requires the mint to fix the rate of exchange at face value, does not reinstate the law. The common qualifier fails to give plausible reasons for how the mint price of money can coexist with a different market price. They then propose a new qualifier to Gresham's Law and argue its validity: bad money drives out good only when there are significant costs to using the good money at a premium.Money ; Gresham's law