Origins of the U.S. Financial System

An Integrative Institutional Framework of the Canada–US Business Performance Gap

“…Americanized and British mercantilist institutions shared some common elements (Greene 2000). Consistent with this view, the U.S. has historically deployed trade regulations (i.e., export and import restrictions plus high tariffs on imports in selected industries), anticompetition regulations (i.e., implicit accommodation of large multinational corporations through the weak enforcement of antitrust laws), and financial control structures (i.e., centralized public finances, use of a uniform unit of account, and a strong central bank) (Adams 2021;Mancke 1999;Sylla and Wright 2019). Notably, the U.S. almost doubled its land mass by purchasing Louisiana from the French in 1803 under mutually acceptable terms (Levinson 2005).…”