Competition and Monopoly in the Federal Reserve System, 1914–1951: A Microeconomic Approach to Monetary History

In this book Mark Toma explores the workings of the early Federal Reserve System as a means of challenging the traditional (monetary) approach to central banking. His approach is framed in the spirit of the public choice tradition, but is novel insofar as its focus is the microeconomics of the central banking industry. He develops a series of micro-based models of the banking sector which are used to explain historical developments in central banking. Professor Toma shows that competition among reserve banks in the 1920s did not result in an over-issue of Fed money predicted by the monetary models. He argues that Congress imposed a more monopolistic structure on the Fed in the mid-1930s in order to accommodate the increased revenue demands of the Treasury at the time. The book is unique in emphasizing the evolution of the Federal Reserve from a competitive to a monopolistic structure.