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Study of ante-bellum economic development of the United States has been hampered by an acute shortage of reliable statistical data. Studies of the early capital markets are no exception to this general rule. For the years after 1856, Frederick Macaulay's excellent study provides sufficient quantitative basis for general research; but, in the earlier years, only Bigelow's single unsupported interest series provides the economic historian with statistical information on the condition of the credit market.
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Lance E. Davis (1960) studied this question.
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