Includes bibliographical references and index.

Financial innovations and crises: the view backwards from Northern Rock / Jeremy Atack -- An economic explanation of the early Bank of Amsterdam, debasement, bills of exchange and the emergence of the first central bank / Stephen Quinn and William Roberds -- With a view to hold: the emergence of institutional investors on the Amsterdam securities market during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries / Oscar Gelderblom and Joost Jonker -- Was John Law's System a bubble? The Mississippi Bubble revisited / François R. Velde -- Sir George Caswall vs. the Duke of Portland: financial contracts and litigation in the wake of the South Sea Bubble / Gary S. Shea -- The bell jar: commercial interest rates between two revolutions, 1688-1789 / Marc Flandreau ... [et al.] -- Comparing the UK and US financial systems, 1790-1830 / Richard Sylla -- Natural experiments in financial reform in the nineteenth century: the Davis and Gallman analysis / Larry Neal -- Regulatory changes and the development of the US banking market, 1870-1914: a study of profit rates and risk in national banks / Richard J. Sullivan -- Anticipating the stock market crash of 1929: the view from the floor of the stock exchange / Eugene N. White -- The development of "non-traditional" open market operations: lessons from FDR's silver purchase program / Richard C.K. Burdekin and Marc D. Weidenmier -- The interwar shocks to US-Cuban trade relations: a view through sugar company stock price data / Alan Dye and Richard Sicotte -- Central bank reaction functions during the inter-war gold standard: a view from the periphery / Kirsten Wandschneider -- When do stock market booms occur? The macroeconomic and policy environments of twentieth century booms / Michael D. Bordo and David C. Wheelock -- Lessons from history for the twenty-first century / Larry Neal.