Chapters on the theory and history of banking

Chapters on the theory and history of banking – is a work written by Charles Franklin Dunbar. He was an American economist. President of the American Economic Association in 1893, co-founder of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, founder and professor of the Department of Political Economy at Harvard University. The purpose of these chapters is to provide a convenient presentation of common banking operations, which the author felt the need for, when he lectured on banking to a large class of students on the elements of political economy. To the chapters on such transactions, it was found useful to add a series of historical chapters on some of the great banks and banking systems, partly to illustrate theory easily, and partly to fill the gap in any good guide to the history of banking. Eight chapters were printed in 1885 for use by the classrooms at Harvard University, but were not presented to the public. These have now been supplemented with an introductory chapter, a chapter on combined reserves or the clearinghouse loan certificate system, and a chapter on Bank of Amsterdam. Everything has been revised, and the current history has been reduced to the present, and now the book is presented to students and readers in the hope that it can help in the systematic study of a subject, the consideration of which by writers after economics is usually either too general or too vague for ordinary goals. The author commented on his text with a freedom that perhaps requires some apology, wanting his notes to serve a dual purpose: to inform the reader of the sources from which the statements are made, and to invite him to study the sources in more detail, deeper than was possible within the framework of this publication.