How a Ledger Became a Central Bank

Stephen Quinn is a Professor of Economics at Texas Christian University. He has published extensively on the origins of banking in London and Amsterdam, which has awarded him a visiting lectureship at the Bank of England and a New York Times Magazine Idea of the Year. William Roberds is a research economist and senior advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He has been an economist with the Federal Reserve since 1984 and has published academic research in the areas of finance, monetary policy, payment systems, and central bank history.

• 1. Similar yet different?; 2. The world of the bank; 3. Coins in eighteenth-century Amsterdam; 4. First steps, 1609–1659; 5. Emergence of the receipt system, 1660–1710; 6. Metal in motion: the mechanics of receipts; 7. Two banks and one money, 1711–1791; 8. Prussia's debasement during the Seven Years War: the role of the Bank; 9. The bank's place in central bank history.

'Stephen Quinn and Will Roberds have written a remarkable book on the world's first true central bank and its first true international currency. Their newly unearthed history sheds much light on the past, but also the future, of the international monetary and financial system.' Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley