Many people have helped to make this project a reality. At Flat World Knowledge, Shannon Gattens and Jeff Shelstad helped to shepherd the concept and the manuscript through the standard trials and tribulations. Along the way, a score of anonymous academic readers helped to keep our economic analyses and prose on the straight and narrow. Paul Wachtel and Richard Sylla, two colleagues at New York University’s Stern School of Business, also aided us along the way with measured doses of praise and criticism. We thank them all. Thanks too to the University of Virginia’s Department of Economics, especially the duo of economic historians and “money guys” there, Ron Michener and John James, for putting up with Wright one very hot summer in Charlottesville. Very special thanks go to the members of Wright’s Summer I 2007 Money and Banking class at the University of Virginia, who suffered through a free but error-prone first draft, mostly with good humor and always with helpful comments: Kevin Albrecht, Adil Arora, Eric Bagden, Michelle Coffey, Timothy Dalbey, Karina Delgadillo, Christopher Gorham, Joshua Hefner, Joseph Henderson, Jamie Jackson, Anthony Jones, Robert Jones, Risto Keravuori, Heather Koo, Sonia Kwak, Yiding Li, Patrick Lundquist, Maria McLemore, Brett Murphy, Daniel Park, Bensille Parker, Rose Phan, Patrick Reams, Arjun Sharma, Cole Smith, Sandy Su, Paul Sullivan, Nedim Umur, Will van der Linde, Neal Wood, and June Yang.

It’s customary at this point for authors to assume full responsibility for the facts and judgments in their books. We will not buck that tradition: the buck stops here! Unlike a journal article or academic monograph, textbooks afford ample room for revision in subsequent editions, of which we hope there will be many. So if you spot a problem, contact the publisher and we’ll fix it at the earliest (economically justifiable) opportunity.

Robert E. Wright, February 2009, Abington, Pennsylvania

Vincenzo Quadrini, February 2009, Los Angeles, California