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This article presents several research papers related to banks and asset markets during war and depression. "The Great Banks' Depression: Deposit Withdrawals in the German Crisis of 1931," uses monthly balance-sheet data of all major German credit banks, and further analyze deposit withdrawals and bank failures in the German banking and currency crisis of 1931. "International Financial Crisis Contagion in the Interwar Period," examines international financial markets and the links between them using a newly hand-collected data set for more than 300 company stocks, encompassing weekly equity-market observations for 13 countries.

The article presents abstracts of research related to economic history. These include "Ecological Frontiers on the Grasslands of Kansas: Changes in Farm Scale and Crop Diversity," "Institutional Innovation and the Creation of Liquid Financial Markets: The Case of the American Over-the-Counter Market," and "Geographic and Regulatory Frontiers in Commercial Banking: Private Banking in the United States, Scotland and Germany in Early Industrialization."

Explores how the banks chartered by states in the United States (U.S.) provide a source of flexibility in state public finance following the decision of the U.S. Constitution to remove the states' power to issue paper money. Role of investment earnings and tax revenues derived from banks in state public finance; Importance of state-bank relationships to public finance.

Presents an abstract of a research paper entitled `Bank-Firm Relationships and the Development of Interlocking Directorates in the Kaiserreich,' by Caroline Fohlin, presented at the annual meeting of the Economic History Association.

This article presents several research papers related to economic history. "Educational Disparity in Pakistan, 1947-1971." Using time-series data, this paper documents the regional divide in educational facilities between East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan, 1947-1971. "Management Structure and Bank Performance: Empirical Examination of the Chinese Banking Industry," investigates the relationship between bank performance and management structure in Shanghai between 1912 and 1937. The data come from Shanghai's Municipal Archives and the Center for Research of Chinese Business History.

The article presents a paper which examines the organizational culture of the World Bank, and explains why it has not assumed a human rights policy. It states that the institution has assumed several environmental and social policies and works on issues. However, it says that the bank has not established an operational policy on human rights. Hence, the marginality of human rights in the bank's policy contradicts its public speeches official reports wherein they have discussed and supported human rights. It tells that the bank does not maintain complete and consistent access on human rights policy and operational levels. Hence, due to the its existing policies, it justifies that the bank lacks three provisions including a staff policy to reduce the effect of its projects on human rights.

The article presents a comment on the paper on "The German Twin Crisis of 1931" by Isabel Schnabel, published in the current issue of "The Journal of Economic History." It is lovely to see attention to this critical episode in the Great Depression. Schnabel repeats the familiar argument that bank behavior was a primary cause of the German crisis. The crisis clearly began as a currency crisis, not a banking crisis. The purpose of this comment is to examine the data that Schnabel's article brings to bear on this question and evaluate the evidence it presents in support of its hypothesis.

Argues that changes in the regulatory environment help greatly to explain the movements in circulation and increased bank entry. The reduction in circulation can be traced to an 1882 change in the law that allowed banks to divest their bond holdings; A model linking regulation and national bank note issue; The market for real paper money; Empirical tests; Conclusion.

The article presents a reply by the author of the paper "The German Twin Crisis of 1931" to a comment on it by Thomas Ferguson and Peter Temin. He says that the article was criticized for only paying lip service to the notion of a twin crisis while providing a story of a pure banking crisis. In fact it was never claimed that the crisis was a pure banking crisis. The question is whether and to what extent books contributed to the crisis. It is argued that weaknesses in the banking sector existed, which interacted with the currency problems in numerous ways.