This is a review article of the book Economic and Financial Crises in Emerging Market Economies, edited by Martin Feldstein and published in 2003.

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.

Written by Maurice Obstfeld and Alan Taylor, Global Capital Markets: Integration, Crisis, and Growth was a much-needed book that will be cited extensively by those with interests in the long run evolution of the world financial capital market. The book does not simply assess changes in the efficiency of global capital markets over the past 150 years, but rather adds significantly to debates about instability and crisis, asymmetry between rich and poor countries in the costs of going open, the Lucas Paradox, the connections between foreign exchange and financial capital market regimes, and much more. The book makes far better use of the comparative evidence generated by the three epochs since 1850—the first global century before 1914, the second global century after 1950, and the autarchy in between—than do competitors that focus solely on one regime, whether the gold standard, post–World War II Breton Woods, or the float since. In addition, while the financial literature rarely assesses in any useful empirical way the connection between financial markets and the real economy, this book makes that connection absolutely clear. Global Capital Markets is a stimulating book with a very wide and deep reach.

This paper examines the progressive development of the new institutional economics over the past quarter century. It begins by distinguishing four levels of social analysis, with special emphasis on the institutional environment and the institutions of governance. It then turns to some of the good ideas out of which the NIE works: the description of human actors, feasibility, firms as governance structures, and operationalization. Applications, including privatization, are briefly discussed. Its empirical successes, public policy applications, and other accomplishments notwithstanding, there is a vast amount of unfinished business.

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.

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: