Money and Banking

I have re-examined Bastiat’s contributions to economic theory and have found the charges against him to be unsubstantiated. In terms of economic theory, Bastiat is widely knowledgeable

In this paper the theory of optimum currency areas (OCA) is presented, and then I will attempt to prove:

1. The OCA theory is nonoperational and irrelevant in dealing with the present international monetary situation.
2. The basic postulates of OCA theory are internally inconsistent and incompatible with economic theory.

Between 1830 and 1903, Sweden experienced one of the longest and most successful free-banking periods in history. During this period, private note issuing banks were allowed and prospered. 

Selgin (2009) questions the practicality of 100 percent reserve requirements applied to small change. He interprets the private coinage of small change in 18th century England as embodying fiduciary media

Economist Fritz Machlup took a unique goals-assumptions-opportunity costs approach to the examination of alternative monetary reform plans. During the Bellagio Group conferences he,

Almost all contemporary Austrian economists are united in their opposition to central banking and their advocacy of a system of free competitive banking.

The essential reason that a 100-percent-reserve gold standard should be the ultimate goal of monetary reform is that is would secure the economic system against the evils both of inflation and of deflation-depression. 

Monetary competition, a result of the abolition of legal tender, would seriously curtail the politization of the euro. But is it possible to completely separate the euro from politics without returning 

Austrians have demonstrated that recessions—and depressions—are the inevitable result of central bank intervention in the economy. 

Austrian monetary inflation theory claims that changes in the money supply are disproportionately distributed throughout an economy, and as a result wealth inequality is exacerbated.