Charles Coquelin and jules dupuit on banking and credit

Abstract

Charles Coquelin and Jules Dupuit both advocated free banking, but they articulated different views on credit, the note-issuing mechanism, the role of banking in economic crises. For Coquelin, credit allowed producers to enhance their productive capacities. There was no need to restrict the issuing of banknotes to the quantity of metallic reserves. Coquelin emphasized the role that privileged banks played in the emergence of economic crises. For his part, Dupuit did not believe that credit could create more capital, warned against the excessive issuing of banknotes. Dupuit considered economic crises to be caused by real factors. I argue that Coquelin's ideas reflected a credit theory of money while Dupuit's views were characteristic of a monetary theory of credit.