A History of Banking in Antebellum America

Professor Bodenhorn reveals how America was served by an efficient system of financial intermediaries by the mid-nineteenth century.

Focusing on the credit generating function of American banks, this history demonstrates that banks aggressively promoted economic development rather than passively followed its course. Professor Bodenhorn uses unexploited data to reveal how banks promoted both industrialization and geographic capital mobility.Previous banking histories have focused on the money supply function of early American banks and its connection to the recurrent boom-bust cycle of the antebellum era. This history focuses on the credit generating function of American banks It demonstrates that banks aggressively promoted development rather than passively followed its course. Using previously unexploited data, Professor Bodenhorn shows that banks helped to advance the development of incipient industrialization. Additionally, he shows that banks formed long-distance relationships that promoted geographic capital mobility, thereby assuring that short-term capital was directed in socially desirable directions, that is, where it was most in demand. He then traces those institutional and legal developments that allowed for this capital mobility. The result was that America was served by an efficient system of financial intermediaries by the mid-nineteenth century.