British Economic Growth, 1270–1870 makes a big leap forward in our understanding of the long-run performance of what became the leading nineteenth-century economy and the workshop of the world. It does so by implementing a giant quantitative enterprise, one that will make it the standard data source for studying the evolution of the British economy for decades to come. (JEL C82, D31, E23, I31, I32, N13, N33)

ing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lend to its member countries? At a somewhat abstract level, I would suggest that it could be defined as that of easing the external constraint on its member countries to the extent that such an easing can be expected to be advantageous to the world community as a whole. It follows immediately that the eas- ing has to be of the external constraint pro- vided by liquidity rather than solvency, since at best, an easing of the solvency constraint involves a resource transfer that will leave the donors worse off, while at worst, a belief in endogeneity of the solvency constraint creates moral hazard problems that under- mine the incentive for economic efficiency. Hence, my conception of the principle that should be guiding the Fund's lending policies is that they ease the external liquidity con- straint to the degree that is generally ad- vantageous while preserving the intertem-

I distinguish between unilateral and bilateral trading relations in an earlier article in this Review (1983) in which I examined the use of hostages (or their commercial equivalents) to support exchange. The purposes of this note are 1) to confirm the optimality of reciprocal trading by explicitly displaying the combined net benefit relations, and 2) to acknowledge a previously unremarked complication that arises when nonsalvageable assets are used as hostages in a unilateral trade.

This review essay reviews the volume edited by Owen Humpage, Current Federal Reserve Policy under the Lens of Economic History: Essays to Commemorate the Federal Reserve System’s Centennial, and provides a broader perspective on central-banking issues. The papers in the Humpage volume address various aspects of central banking history, money, and private banking, with a focus on putting recent Fed policies in perspective. The topics covered include the role of the central bank as lender of last resort, the effects of open-market operations versus central-bank lending, central-bank independence, the political economy of monetary unions, financial crises, the effects of unconventional monetary policies, commodity monies, and the Canadian financial system as a natural experiment. (JEL E32, E52, E58, G01, G21, G28, N10)

From 1998 to 2011, U.S. firms held more cash on average (but not at the median) than similar foreign firms (foreign twins) did. The average difference in cash holdings does not increase after 2008, and it is driven by highly R&D-intensive U.S. firms. Because there are almost no similarly R&D-intensive foreign firms, mean comparisons involving these U.S. firms are not reliable. Without these U.S. firms, neither U.S. multinational firms nor purely domestic U.S. firms hold more cash than their foreign twins do. Country characteristics have negligible explanatory power for differences in cash holdings between U.S. firms and their foreign twins.

The economic impact of corporate self-dealing and the regulation against such activity both vary across countries. In this work, we examine the influence of trust on shareholder protection. We hypothesize that anonymous trust can affect self-dealing through two channels. First, trust may complement existing formal regulation. Alternatively, trust and formal regulation can act as substitutes. To test these hypotheses, we examine the association between a country's anti-self-dealing index and anonymous trust. We find that anonymous trust inversely relates to formal self-dealing regulation. We further find that anonymous trust positively relates to financial market development. Collectively, this evidence suggests that trust substitutes for formal self-dealing regulation, providing an alternative mechanism for shareholder protection.

NO WORLD CENTRAL BANK issues a separate currency for commerce across national boundaries. Instead, a system of national monies works more or less well in providing a medium of exchange and unit of account for current international transactions, as well as a store of value and standard of deferred payment for longer-term borrowing and lending. How do national governments and banking institutions interact to provide international money for merchants and investors? By necessity, this monetary interaction changes with time, place, political circumstances, and financial technology. To better understand its historical evolution, let us follow Robert Mundell and distinguish between a monetary system and a monetary order:

Abstract We find that the effectiveness of piece‐rate compensation relative to fixed pay in a laboratory letter‐search task hinges on the presence or absence of a nonbinding statement to participants that the experimenter values correct responses. In the absence of the value statement, participants with piece‐rate rewards for correct responses generate more correct and incorrect responses than do their counterparts with fixed pay, correcting errors as they go along to maximize compensation. Essentially, piece‐rate compensation acts as an output control, incentivizing participants to maximize correct responses through a “produce‐and‐improve” strategy. The value statement suppresses this strategy because participants appear to perceive it as an input constraint, prompting greater initial care at the expense of lower overall productivity. As a result, the value statement eliminates the gains in correct responses that piece‐rate incentivized participants otherwise realize. Thus, in settings in which individuals can gain efficiency by working expeditiously and improving quality when necessary, our results suggest the possibility that organizations could be better off just letting incentive schemes operate, rather than emphasizing quality in ways that could overly constrain productivity.

From 1998 to 2011, U.S. firms held more cash on average (but not at the median) than similar foreign firms (foreign twins) did. The average difference in cash holdings does not increase after 2008, and it is driven by highly R&D-intensive U.S. firms. Because there are almost no similarly R&D-intensive foreign firms, mean comparisons involving these U.S. firms are not reliable. Without these U.S. firms, neither U.S. multinational firms nor purely domestic U.S. firms hold more cash than their foreign twins do. Country characteristics have negligible explanatory power for differences in cash holdings between U.S. firms and their foreign twins. Received April 17, 2014; accepted August 4, 2015 by Editor David Denis.