Wright offers fresh and compelling arguments that illuminate motivations for individual and collective actions, and brings agency back into the historical equation.
Modern financial theories enable us to look at old problems in early American Republic historiography from new perspectives. Concepts such as information asymmetry, portfolio choice, and principal-agent dilemmas open up new scholarly vistas. Transcending the ongoing debates over the prevalence of either community or capitalism in early America, Wright offers fresh and compelling arguments that illuminate motivations for individual and collective actions, and brings agency back into the historical equation.
Wright argues that the Colonial rebellion was in part sparked by destabilizing British monetary policy that threatened many with financial insolvency; that in areas without modern financial institutions and practices, dueling was a rational means of protecting one's creditworthiness; that the principle-agent problem led to the institutionalization of the U.S. Constitution's system of checks and balances; and that a lack of information and education induced women to shift from active business owners to passive investors. Economists, historians, and political scientists alike will be interested in this strikingly novel and compelling recasting of our nation's formative decades.
Introduction
Interest Rates and the Coming of the American Revolution
Early U.S. Constitutions as Solutions to the Principal-Agent Problem
Financial Development, Economic Growth, and Political Stability
Banks and the "Revolution" of 1800
Credit Analysis and the Prevalence of Dueling
Financial Markets and the Subjugation of Women
Postscript
References
Index
Reviews
This provocative and well-researched work examines early American history from the standpoint of modern financial theory....Highly Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through faculty collections.—Choice
Endorsements
Business schools teach financial theories and concepts to enable MBAs to make money. In this fascinating book on early U.S. history, Robert Wright, Ph.D., uses them to explain why Americans declared independence, why they put checks and balances into their constitutions, why Jefferson defeated Adams in the critical election of 1800, why southerners were more fond of dueling than northerners, and why women went from active to passive roles in the early U.S. economy. It is an innovative and path-breaking work of historical interpretation.—Richard Sylla^LHenry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets and Professor of Economics^LNew York University
