Using an inter-disciplinary and global approach this book examines the different roles gold played in the international economy from the late 19th century until today. It gives a complete and comprehensive overview of the many facets of the global gold market's organization from the extraction...

Drawing on a new data set of monthly observations, this paper investigates similarities and differences in the discount rate policy of 12 European countries under the Classical Gold Standard. It asks, in particular, whether the bank rate policy followed different patterns in core and peripheral...

This study analyses the functioning of the “gold standard” in the Ottoman Empire during the pre-1914 gold standard era, with specific emphasis on the institutions regulating commodity money and fiat money. It explores the extent to which the Ottoman monetary system was an outlier with...

Based on daily prices (amtliche Kurse) we estimate effective spreads of securities traded at the Berlin Stock Exchange in 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1910. Several extensions of the Roll measure are applied. We find surprisingly tight effective spreads for the historical data, comparable with similar...