Gary Becker on Free Banking

The recently edited Festschrift in honor of Pascal Salin is a highly varied and disparate collection of contributions by colleagues, admirers and friends of the famous French professor of the Université Paris-Dauphine, ranging over a wide variety of subject matters, from personal testimonies and reflections about the methodology of the social sciences to contributions about the relationship between liberalism and Christianity and a plea on behalf of the liberalization of African economies, besides more conventional topics such as the economic analysis of taxation and the theory of money and banking. As such the book, which abundantly illustrates the wide-ranging intellectual interests and accomplishments of the French professor, constitutes a publication event of the greatest significance. It is probably hardly necessary to present the world-renowned professor even to a non-French public. In this contribution I will offer a few critical comments concerning one of the most remarkable contributions contained in the book, which is a paper by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary S. Becker entitled Free Banking.

Volume 22, Number 1 (2011)