Lund University (in Skåne, Sweden) is less than one hour drive from my home in Copenhagen so I very much hope I will be able to participate in the upcoming conference on  “Free Banking systems: diversity in financial and economic growth” at Lund University School of Economics and Management on September 4 – 5 2014. Furthermore, the conference will hopefully lure monetary scholars to Copenhagen as well. I will certainly see whether we could arrange some informal get-together in Copenhagen in connection with the conference.

The conference looks very promising.

I have stolen this from Kurt Schuler at Freebanking.org:

Call for papers:
Conference: Free Banking systems: diversity in financial and economic growth
Lund University School of Economics and Management, September 4 – 5, 2014

Department of Economic History, Lund University, Sweden
For more info on the venue please see: http://www.ekh.lu.se/en

Travelling: Most conveniently to Copenhagen Airport (Kastrup)
There are frequent trains from Copenhagen Airport (Kastrup) to the city of Lund. Travelling time is approximately 35 minutes and the cost for a single journey is around 12 Euros. For more info on travelling please see: http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s/24936

Paper proposal deadline: April 30, 2014
We invite all scholars interested in participating to submit an abstract of approximately 400 words and a short bio to the main organizer Anders Ögren on e-mail: anders.ogren@ekh.lu.se

Notification of acceptance: May 30, 2014

Paper deadline: August 15, 2014
Note that as this is a pre-conference to the session S10133 at the WEHC in Kyoto August 3 – 7, 2015 papers can be preliminary at this point in time.

Conference rationale

In 1992 Kevin Dowd edited the important book “The Experience of Free Banking” gathering several historical episodes of Free Banking in a “historical laboratory”. This collective volume aimed at evaluating Free Banking as a way of achieving both banking stability as well as monetary stability. It was found that the problems usually attached to Free Banking, such as rapid inflation and banking instability, in fact were not at all the consequence of Free Banking, underlining instead that these results questioned the idea that the Central Bank’s monopoly on currency issuance is a natural monopoly. In a way this book was a continuation of the theoretical development on Free Banking made in influential works such as Smith’s “The Rationale of Central Banking” (1936), Hayek’s “Denationalization of Money” (1978), White’s “Free banking in Britain” (1984) and Selgin’s “The Theory of Free Banking” (1988) (to name a few).

As a result of the recent crisis Free banking as a way of achieving both banking stability as well as monetary stability is back on the agenda for scholarly debates. Again there are those who argue that Free Banking systems are more prone to banking instability and banking failures with less positive impact on growth than banking systems operating under a state sponsored Central Bank. But to the contrary there are those that argue that banking and monetary instability and slumps in growth due to crises are results of the increased importance of central banks.

Supporters and skeptics of Free Banking alike are using historical episodes as laboratories for empirical testing of their ideas. But to what extent are the features of the alleged Free Banking episodes comparable, not only between different historical episodes but also in relation to theory or in relation to Central Bank based banking systems. Historically many varieties of banking exists between what would be the theoretically pure Free banking system and a Central bank based system. All these varieties provides essential information about how a banking system works and why it obtains certain results in terms of banking and monetary stability and in extension in growth. Thus comparing the diversity of the development of Free Banking systems allows us to understand their different impact on economic growth.

Thus the idea with this conference is to continue the work to make historical cross country comparisons on Free Banking episodes and theories – aiming at understanding what features that are required for different stages of free or central banking and to disentangle the impact of these different variables on banking and monetary stability. We welcome scholars working on empirical cases of what is suggested to be Free Banking – whether their results seem to support Free Banking or Central Banking or a hybrid between the two.

This conference is an open pre-conference to the session S10133 at the WEHC in Kyoto August 3 – 7, 2015. Due to time constraints participation in this conference does not necessarily imply participation at this session at the WEHC conference.

Organizers:

Anders Ögren
Lund University
E-mail: anders.ogren@ekh.lu.se

Andres Alvarez
Universidad de los Andes

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