Does fractional reserve banking endanger the economy? A debate

On April 16, 2018, two free market economists debated a topic that has long divided libertarians. Fractional reserve banking refers to banks' standard practice of keeping only a portion of their depositors' money on hand and loaning out the rest.

In The Mystery of Banking (1983), the anarcho-capitalist economist Murray Rothbard called fractional reserve banking "a shell game, a Ponzi scheme, a fraud in which fake warehouse receipts are issued and circulate as equivalent to the cash supposedly represented by the receipts." Other libertarian economists, such as Larry White and Steve Horwitz, have argued that the practice is perfectly defensible.

At The Soho Forum, a debate series in New York City that is sponsored by the Reason Foundation, Robert Murphy debated George Selgin over the following resolution: "Fractional Reserve banking poses a threat to the stability of market economies."

Murphy, a research assistant professor with the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University, argued for the affirmative. He has a Ph.D. in economics from NYU has addiliations with the Institute for Energy Research, the Mises Institute, the Fraser Institute, and the Independent Institute. He has authored hundreds of articles and several books explaining economics to the layperson, including Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action.

Selgin, who opposed the resolution, is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Georgia. His research covers a broad range of topics within the field of monetary economics, including monetary history, macroeconomic theory, and the history of monetary thought. He is the author of The Theory of Free Banking, Bank Deregulation and Monetary Order, Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy, and most recently Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage.

The Soho Forum runs Oxford-style debates, in which the audience votes on the resolution at the beginning and end of the event. The side that gains more ground is victorious. ​In this case, Selgin won by convincing 14 percent of the audience to switch over to his side.

Conversation on free banking theory between Larry White and Juan Ramón Rallo

Lawrence H. White is economics professor at George Mason University and Juan Ramón Rallo is also economist and director of Instituto Juan de Mariana.

Two interesting looking recent working papers

First a paper on Thomas Piketty's recent book:

The Rise and Fall of General Laws of Capitalism
Daron Acemogluy James A. Robinsonz

Abstract
Thomas Piketty's recent book, Capital in the Twenty First Century, follows in the tradition of the great classical economists, Malthus, Ricardo and Marx, in formulating "general laws" to diagnose and predict the dynamics of inequality. We argue that all of these general laws are unhelpful as a guide to understand the past or predict the future, because they ignore the central role of political and economic institutions in shaping the evolution of technology and the distribution of resources in a society. Using the economic and political histories of South Africa and Sweden, we illustrate not only that the focus on the share of top incomes gives a misleading characterization of the key determinants of societal inequality, but also that inequality dynamics are closely linked to institutional factors and their endogenous evolution, much more than the forces emphasized in Piketty's book, such as the gap between the interest rate and the growth rate.

and then one on free banking and economic growth in Quebec:

Free Banking and Economic Growth in Lower Canada, 1817–1851
Mathieu Bedard and Vincent Geloso

Abstract
Generally, the historical literature presents the period from 1817 to 1851 in Lower Canada (modern day Quebec) as one of negative economic growth. This period also coincides with the rise of free banking in the colony. In this paper we propose to study the effects of free banking on economic growth using theoretical and empirical validations to study the issue of whether or not economic growth was negative. First of all, using monetary identities, we propose that given the increase in the stock of money and the reduction in the general price level, there must have been a positive rate of economic growth during the period. We also provide complementary evidence drawn from wages that living standards were increasing. It was hence impossible for growth to have been negative. Secondly, we propose that the rise of privately issued paper money under free banking in the colony had the effect of mitigating the problem of the abundance of poor quality coins in circulation which resulted from legal tender legislation. It also had the effect of facilitating credit networks and exchange. We link this conclusion to the emergence of free banking which must have been an important contributing factor. Although we cannot perfectly quantity the effect of free banking on economic growth in Lower Canada, we can be certain that its effect on growth was clearly positive.