| List of Tables | |
| Acknowledgments | |
| List of Abbreviations | |
| 1 | Introduction: The Wealth of Nations and National Wealth | 1 |
| 2 | The International and Colonial Background of America's Financial Revolution | 9 |
| The First Financial Revolutions: Holland and Great Britain | 10 |
| Colonial America: Courts and Experiments | 16 |
| The First U.S. Information Revolution: From Periphery to Center | 18 |
| 3 | Banks, Securities Markets, and the Reduction of Asymmetric Information | 26 |
| Adverse Selection | 28 |
| Moral Hazard | 32 |
| The Principal-Agent Problem | 37 |
| 4 | The Financial Sector and the Reduction of Lending-Related Costs and Risks | 43 |
| Commercial Banking: Intermediation and Information Creation | 45 |
| The Emergence of Secondary Securities Markets | 51 |
| The National Bank and the Panic of 1792 | 75 |
| 5 | Evidence of Capital Market Integration, 1800-1850 | 82 |
| Brief Descriptions of the Major Securities Markets | 82 |
| Price Comparisons between Markets | 91 |
| Price Movements and the Theory of Portfolio Choice | 94 |
| Evidence of Efficiency: Bid-Ask Spreads | 97 |
| Geographical Distribution of Stockholders: Maine and Beyond | 99 |
| 6 | Expansion of the Securities Services Sector, 1790-1850 | 123 |
| Brokers: Their Role and Numbers | 124 |
| Initial Public Offerings | 130 |
| Trading Volumes in the Secondary Securities Markets: The Case of Philadelphia | 135 |
| Nonlisted Securities | 159 |
| A Brief Sketch of the Expansion of the Securities Sector | 166 |
| 7 | The Freest of the Free: Regulation of the Financial Sector | 167 |
| Securities Market Regulations | 167 |
| Special Banking Regulations | 173 |
| General Banking Regulations in New York: The Revised Statutes, the Safety Fund, and Free Banking | 175 |
| 8 | Finance-Directed Economic Development | 193 |
| Financing Trade | 194 |
| Financing Farming through Internal Improvements | 201 |
| Financing Manufacturing | 204 |
| 9 | Conclusion | 212 |
| References | 217 |
| Index | 227 |
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