A History of Banking in Antebellum America or The Moral Ecology of Markets

A History of Banking in Antebellum America: Financial Markets and Economic Development in an Era of Nation-Building

Author: Howard Bodenhorn

This history focuses on the credit generating function of American banks. It demonstrates that banks aggressively promoted economic development rather than passively following its course. Using previously unexploited data, Professor Bodenhorn shows that banks helped to advance the development of industrialization. Additionally, he shows that banks formed long-distance relationships that promoted geographic capital mobility, thereby assuring that short-term capital was directed in socially desirable directions. He then traces those institutional and legal developments that allowed for this capital mobility.

New interesting textbook: Marketing Planning for the Pharmaceutical Industry or Mastering Public Speaking

The Moral Ecology of Markets: Assessing Claims about Markets and Justice

Author: Daniel K Finn

Disagreements about the morality of markets, and about self-interested behavior within markets, run deep. They arise from perspectives within economics and political philosophy that appear to have nothing in common. In this book, Daniel Finn provides a framework for understanding these conflicting points of view. Recounting the arguments for and against markets and self-interest, he argues that every economy must address four fundamental problems: allocation, distribution, scale, and the quality of relations. In addition, every perspective on the morality of markets addresses explicitly or implicitly the economic, political, and cultural contexts of markets, or what Finn terms 'the moral ecology of markets'. His book enables a dialogue among the various participants in the debate over justice in markets. In this process, Finn engages with major figures in political philosophy, including John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Michael Walzer, as well as in economics, notably Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and James Buchannan.

Table of Contents:

1	Thinking ethically about economic life	1
2	De-moralized economic discourse about markets	11
3	The moral defense of self-interest and markets	34
4	The moral critique of self-interest and markets	54
5	The four problems of economic life	76
6	The market as an arena of freedom	103
7	The market's moral ecology	126
8	Implications	146