The Duration of Book Credit in Colonial New England

Account books show that merchants frequently used book credit in exchanges with consumers. The ability of credit to act as a substitute for currency in payments depends on the terms attached to the credit, such as its duration. Employing lifetable analysis and the singulate mean age at marriage, I arrive at expected duration estimates in excess of those in the literature. Given the expected duration, book credit seems a good substitute for other forms of payment. If this is the case, I argue that a major revision of literature on colonial monetary matters may be in order.