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  3. Studies in Macroeconomic History

The titles in this series investigate themes of interest to economists and economic historians in the rapidly developing field of macroeconomic history. The four areas covered include the application of monetary and finance theory, international economics and quantitative methods to historical problems; the historical application of growth and development theory and theories of business fluctuations; the history of domestic and international monetary, financial and other macroeconomic institutions; and the history of international monetary and financial systems.

  • General Editors: Michael D. Bordo, Rutgers University, New Jersey
  • Associate Editors: Owen F. Humpage, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Christopher M. Meissner, University of California, Davis, Kris James Mitchener, Santa Clara University, California, David C. Wheelock, Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis

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53 results in Studies in Macroeconomic History

Page 1 of 3

Before the Fed
  • J.P. Morgan, America's Lender of Last Resort
  • Jon Moen, Mary Tone Rodgers
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    31 October 2025
  • In the 19th century the United States had no formal central bank or lender of last resort, but it did have J. P. Morgan. His unique knowledge of financial markets gave him almost omniscient knowledge for crafting solutions to financial crises. Before the Fed examines Morgan's unusual role in resolving the National Banking Era crises in the U. S., exploring the rocky relationships and ultimatums he used to settle financial panics. It traces how he learned crisis management lessons from his father, passing it along to his son in turn. Citing his own ledgers, telegrams and testimony, Jon Moen and Mary Tone Rodgers detail how Morgan applied and modified routine business practices to solve non-routine crises, managing risk and reward in emergency lending. Analyzing forty last resort loans made over his fifty-year career, the authors challenge the invincibility folklore surrounding Morgan, uncovering how he stabilized American markets when others could not.

The City's Defense
  • The Bank of England and the Remaking of Economic Governance, 1914–1939
  • Robert Yee
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    31 October 2025
  • In The City's Defense, Robert Yee examines how the City of London maintained its status as an international financial center. He traces the role of the Bank of England in restructuring the domestic, imperial, European, and international monetary system in the aftermath of the First World War. Responding to mass unemployment and volatile exchange rates, the Bank expanded its reach into areas outside the traditional scope of central banking, including industrial policy and foreign affairs. It designed a system of economic governance that reinforced the preeminence of sterling as a reserve currency. Drawing on a range of archival evidence from national governments, private corporations, and international organizations, Yee reevaluates our understanding of Britain's impact on the global economic order.

Extroverted Financialisation
  • Banking on US Dollar Debt
  • Mareike Beck
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2025
    Print publication:
    21 August 2025
  • Extroverted Financialization offers a new account of the Americanization of global finance through the concept of 'extroverted financialization'. The study presents German banks as active participants of financialization, demonstrating how deeply entangled they were with global markets since post-WWII reconstruction. Extroverted Financialization locates the transformation of global banking within the revolution of funding practices in 1960s New York and shows how this empowered US banks to systematically outcompete their European counterparts. This uneven competition drove German banks to partially uproot themselves from their own home markets and transform their own banking models into US financial models. This transformation not only led to the German banks' speculative investments during the 2000s subprime mortgage bubble, but more importantly to rising USD dependency and their contemporary decline.

There Will Be the Devil to Pay
  • Central Bankers, Uncertainty and Sensemaking in the European Financial Crisis of 1931
  • Per H. Hansen
  • Published online:
    21 December 2024
    Print publication:
    09 January 2025
  • The European financial crisis of 1931 was a pivotal moment in the economic and financial history of the twentieth century. Based on extensive archival research and a cultural conceptual framework, There Will be the Devil To Pay offers a new and much needed understanding of the European financial crisis. It tells the dramatic story of the five months that led to the breakdown of the gold standard, writing the history of the crisis from the perspective of central bankers, private bankers, and government officials. It provides a new narrative of how those involved struggled to understand and respond to the crisis as it unfolded. Contributing to the emerging literature on radical uncertainty and narrative economics, this book provides a detailed analysis of how decision-makers confront uncertainty and shape narratives that create actionable knowledge and enable decision-making.

Capital in Banking
  • The Role of Capital in Banking in the 19th and 20th Century: The United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland
  • Simon Amrein
  • Published online:
    09 December 2024
    Print publication:
    23 January 2025
  • Capital in Banking traces the role of capital in US, British, and Swiss banking from the 19th to the 21st century. The book discusses the impact of perceptions and conventions on capital ratios in the 19th century, the effects of the First and Second World Wars, and the interaction of crises and banking regulation during the 1930s and the 1970s. Moreover, it emphasises the origins of the risk-weighted assets approach for measuring capital adequacy and explains how the 2007/2008 crisis led to a renaissance of unweighted capital ratios. The book shows that undisclosed reserves, shareholders' liability, and hybrid forms of capital must be considered when assessing capital adequacy. As the first long-run historical assessment of the topic, this book represents a reference point for publications in economics, finance, financial regulation, and financial history. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

How a Ledger Became a Central Bank
  • A Monetary History of the Bank of Amsterdam
  • Stephen Quinn, William Roberds
  • Published online:
    16 November 2023
    Print publication:
    30 November 2023
  • Before the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, the Bank of Amsterdam ('Bank') was a dominant central bank with a global impact on money and credit. How a Ledger Became a Central Bank draws on extensive archival data and rich secondary literature, to offer a new and detailed portrait of this historically significant institution. It describes how the Bank struggled to manage its money before hitting a modern solution: fiat money in combination with a repurchase facility and discretionary open market operations. It describes techniques the Bank used to monitor and stabilize money stock, and how foreign sovereigns could exploit the liquidity of the Bank for state finance. Closing with a discussion of commonalities of the Bank of Amsterdam with later central banks, including the Federal Reserve, this book has generated a great deal of excitement among scholars of central banking and the role of money in the macroeconomy.

The Spread of the Modern Central Bank and Global Cooperation
  • 1919–1939
  • Edited by Barry Eichengreen, Andreas Kakridis
  • Published online:
    02 November 2023
    Print publication:
    16 November 2023
  • Central banks were not always as ubiquitous as they are today. Their functions were circumscribed, their mandates ambiguous, and their allegiances once divided. The inter-war period saw the establishment of twenty-eight new central banks – most in what are now called emerging markets and developing economies. The Emergence of the Modern Central Bank and Global Cooperation provides a new account of their experience, explaining how these new institutions were established and how doctrinal knowledge was transferred. Combining synthetic analysis with national case studies, this book shows how institutional design and monetary practice were shaped by international organizations and leading central banks, which attached conditions to stabilization loans and dispatched 'money doctors.' It highlights how many of these arrangements fell through when central bank independence and the gold standard collapsed.

When Nations Can't Default
  • A History of War Reparations and Sovereign Debt
  • Simon Hinrichsen
  • Published online:
    19 October 2023
    Print publication:
    02 November 2023
  • War reparations have been large and small, repaid and defaulted on, but the consequences have almost always been significant. Ever since Keynes made his case against German reparations in The Economic Consequences of the Peace, the effects of transfer payments have been hotly debated. When Nations Can't Default tells the history of war reparations and their consequences by combining history, political economy, and open economy macroeconomics. It visits often forgotten episodes and tells the story of how reparations were mostly repaid - and when they were not. Analysing fifteen episodes of war reparations, this book argues that reparations are unlike other sovereign debt because repayment is enforced by military and political force, making it a senior liability of the state.

An Exchange Rate History of the United Kingdom
  • 1945–1992
  • Alain Naef
  • Published online:
    23 September 2022
    Print publication:
    29 September 2022
  • How did the Bank of England manage sterling crises? This book steps into the shoes of the Bank's foreign exchange dealers to show how foreign exchange intervention worked in practice. The author reviews the history of sterling over half a century, using new archives, data and unseen photographs. This book traces the sterling crises from the end of the War to Black Wednesday in 1992. The resulting analysis shows that a secondary reserve currency such as sterling plays an important role in the stability of the international system. The author goes on to explore the lessons the Bretton Woods system on managed exchange rates has for contemporary policy makers in the context of Brexit. This is a crucial reference for scholars in economics and history examining past and current prospects for the international financial system. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. 'The open access publication of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation' (here https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/an-exchange-rate-history-of-the-united-kingdom/68B7E57D9884394B815C76D48ACD3FB6).

The Financial Crisis of 2008
  • A History of US Financial Markets 2000–2012
  • Barrie A. Wigmore
  • Published online:
    07 October 2021
    Print publication:
    04 November 2021
  • Supported by ten years of research, Wigmore has gathered extensive data covering the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recovery to provide the first comprehensive history of the period. Financial crises cannot occur unless institutional investors finance the bubbles that created them. Wigmore follows the trail of data putting pressure on institutional investors to achieve higher levels of returns that led to over-leverage throughout the financial system and placed such a burden on recovery. Here is a 'very good picture - and painful reminder - of the crisis' evolution across multiple asset classes, structures, participants, and geographies.' This work serves as a critical analysis of modern portfolio management and an important reference work for financial professionals, academics, investors, and students.

Monetary War and Peace
  • London, Washington, Paris, and the Tripartite Agreement of 1936
  • Max Harris
  • Published online:
    24 February 2021
    Print publication:
    11 March 2021
  • The international monetary system imploded during the Great Depression. As the conventional narrative goes, the collapse of the gold standard and the rise of competitive devaluation sparked a monetary war that sundered the system, darkened the decade, and still serves as a warning to policymakers today. But this familiar tale is only half the story. With the Tripartite Agreement of 1936, Britain, America, and France united to end their monetary war and make peace. This agreement articulated a new vision, one in which the democracies promised to consult on exchange rate policy and uphold a liberal international system - at the very time fascist forces sought to destroy it. Max Harris explores this little-known but path-breaking and successful effort to revolutionize monetary relations, tracing the evolution of the monetary system in the twilight years before the Second World War and demonstrating that this history is not one solely of despair.

After the Accord
  • A History of Federal Reserve Open Market Operations, the US Government Securities Market, and Treasury Debt Management from 1951 to 1979
  • Kenneth D. Garbade
  • Published online:
    14 January 2021
    Print publication:
    04 February 2021
  • In this book Garbade, a former analyst at a primary dealer and researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, traces the evolution of open market operations, Treasury debt management, and the microstructure of the US government securities markets following the 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve. This volume examines how these operations evolved, responding both to external forces and to one another. Utilising a vast scope of primary material, the work provides insight into how officials fashioned the instruments, facilities, and procedures needed to advance their policy objectives in light of their novel freedoms and responsibilities. Students and scholars of macroeconomics, financial regulation, and the history of central banking and the Federal Reserve will find this volume a welcome addition to Garbade's earlier studies of Treasury debt operations during World War I, the 1920s, and the Great Depression and since 1983.

Making a Modern Central Bank
  • The Bank of England 1979–2003
  • Harold James
  • Published online:
    18 September 2020
    Print publication:
    17 September 2020
  • Making a Modern Central Bank examines a revolution in monetary and economic policy. This authoritative guide explores how the Bank of England shifted its traditional mechanisms to accommodate a newly internationalized financial and economic system. The Bank's transformation into a modern inflation-targeting independent central bank allowed it to focus on a precisely defined task of monetary management, ensuring price stability. The reframing of the task of central banks, however, left them increasingly vulnerable to financial crisis. James vividly outlines and discusses significant historical developments in UK monetary policy, and his knowledge of modern European history adds rich context to archival research on the Bank of England's internal documents. A worthy continuation of the previous official histories of the Bank of England, this book also reckons with contemporary issues, shedding light on the origins of growing backlash against globalization and the European Union.

Promoting Global Monetary and Financial Stability
  • The Bank for International Settlements after Bretton Woods, 1973–2020
  • Edited by Claudio Borio, Stijn Claessens, Piet Clement, Robert N. McCauley, Hyun Song Shin
  • Published online:
    10 April 2020
    Print publication:
    30 April 2020
  • As the global organisation of central banks, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has played a significant role in the momentous changes the international monetary and financial system has undergone over the past half century. This book offers a key contribution to understanding these changes. It explores the rise of the emerging market economies, the resulting shifts in the governance of the international financial system, and the role of central bank cooperation in this process. In this truly multidisciplinary effort, scholars from the fields of economics, history, political science and law unravel the most poignant episodes that marked this period, including European monetary unification, the paradigm shifts in economic and financial analysis, the origins and influence of macro-financial stability frameworks, the rise of soft law in international financial governance, central bank crisis management in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis, and, finally, the institutional evolution of the BIS itself.

Currency, Credit and Crisis
  • Central Banking in Ireland and Europe
  • Patrick Honohan
  • Published online:
    09 May 2019
    Print publication:
    23 May 2019
  • The global financial crisis in 2008 brought central banking to the centre stage, prompting questions about the role of national central banks and - in Europe - of the multi-country European Central Bank. What can central banks do, and what are their limitations? How have they performed? Currency, Credit and Crisis seeks to provide a coherent perspective on the functions of a central bank in a small country by assessing the way in which Ireland's financial crisis from 2010 to 2013 was handled. Drawing on his experiences as Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland and in research and policy work at the World Bank, Patrick Honohan offers a detailed analytical narrative of the origins of the crisis and of policy makers' conduct during its most fraught moments.

The Bank of England and the Government Debt
  • Operations in the Gilt-Edged Market, 1928–1972
  • William A. Allen
  • Published online:
    14 December 2018
    Print publication:
    03 January 2019
  • The Bank of England and the Government Debt recounts the surprising history of the Bank of England's activities in the government securities market in the mid-twentieth century. The Bank's governor, Montagu Norman, had a decisive influence on government debt management policy until he retired in 1944, and established an auxiliary market in government securities outside the Stock Exchange during the Second World War. From the early 1950s, the Bank, concerned about inadequate market liquidity, became an increasingly active market-maker in government securities, rescuing the commercial market-makers in the Stock Exchange several times. The Bank's market-making activities often conflicted with its monetary policy objectives, and in 1971, it curtailed them substantially, while avoiding the damaging effects on liquidity in the government securities market that it had feared. Drawing heavily on archival research, William A. Allen sheds light on little-known aspects of central banking and monetary policy.

Controlling Credit
  • Central Banking and the Planned Economy in Postwar France, 1948–1973
  • Eric Monnet
  • Published online:
    29 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018
  • It is common wisdom that central banks in the postwar (1945–1970s) period were passive bureaucracies constrained by fixed-exchange rates and inflationist fiscal policies. This view is mostly retrospective and informed by US and UK experiences. This book tells a different story. Eric Monnet shows that the Banque de France was at the heart of the postwar financial system and economic planning, and that it contributed to economic growth by both stabilizing inflation and fostering direct lending to priority economic activities. Credit was institutionalized as a social and economic objective. Monetary policy and credit controls were conflated. He then broadens his analysis to other European countries and sheds light on the evolution of central banks and credit policy before the Monetary Union. This new understanding has important ramifications for today, since many emerging markets have central bank policies that are similar to Western Europe's in the decades of high growth.

The Fed and Lehman Brothers
  • Setting the Record Straight on a Financial Disaster
  • Laurence M. Ball
  • Published online:
    04 June 2018
    Print publication:
    07 June 2018
  • The bankruptcy of the investment bank Lehman Brothers was the pivotal event of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed. Ever since the bankruptcy, there has been heated debate about why the Federal Reserve did not rescue Lehman in the same way it rescued other financial institutions, such as Bear Stearns and AIG. The Fed's leaders from that time, especially former Chairman Ben Bernanke, have strongly asserted that they lacked the legal authority to save Lehman because it did not have adequate collateral for the loan it needed to survive. Based on a meticulous four-year study of the Lehman case, The Fed and Lehman Brothers debunks the official narrative of the crisis. It shows that in reality, the Fed could have rescued Lehman but officials chose not to because of political pressures and because they underestimated the damage that the bankruptcy would do to the economy. The compelling story of the Lehman collapse will interest anyone who cares about what caused the financial crisis, whether the leaders of the Federal Reserve have given accurate accounts of their actions, and how the Fed can prevent future financial disasters.

Sveriges Riksbank and the History of Central Banking
  • Edited by Rodney Edvinsson, Tor Jacobson, Daniel Waldenström
  • Published online:
    10 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 May 2018
  • Written in celebration of its 350th anniversary in 2018, this book details the history of the central bank of Sweden, Sveriges Riksbank, as presented by Klas Fregert. It relates the bank's history to the development of other major central banks around the world. Chapters are written by some of the more prominent scholars in the field of monetary economics and economic history. These chapters include an analysis of the Bank of England written by Charles Goodhart; the evolution of banking in America, written by Barry Eichengreen; a first account of the People's Bank of China, written by Franklin Allen, Xian Gu, and Jun Qian; as well as a chapter about the brief but important history of the European Central Bank, written by Otmar Issing.

Financial Systems and Economic Growth
  • Credit, Crises, and Regulation from the 19th Century to the Present
  • Edited by Peter L. Rousseau, Paul Wachtel
  • Published online:
    06 October 2017
    Print publication:
    01 September 2017
  • Throughout much of the twentieth century, economists paid little heed to the role of financial intermediaries in procuring a beneficial allocation of capital. By the end of the century, however, some financial historians had begun to turn the tide, and the phrase 'finance-growth nexus' became part of the lexicon of modern economics. Recent experience has added another dimension in that countries with broader, deeper and more active financial systems might be prone to financial crises, particularly if regulatory structures are inadequate. In this book, Peter L. Rousseau and Paul Wachtel have gathered together some of today's most distinguished financial historians to examine this finance-growth nexus from both historical and modern perspectives. Some essays examine the nexus in a particular historical or cross-country context. Others, in the light of recent experience, explore the expanded nexus of finance, growth, crises, and regulation.

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