This paper is a first attempt to garner the theory and evidence on the political economy of the first wave of financial liberalisation during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and of its demise after World War I.  Not everyone gained from the process of globalisation (of trade,...

This paper explores the effect of news shocks on the current account and other macroeconomic variables using worldwide giant oil discoveries as a directly observable measure of news shocks about future output - the delay between a discovery and production is on average 4 to 6 years.  We first...

I address the issue of the `number` of International Monetary Equilibria that the international finance model of Geanokoplos and Tsomocos (2002) possesses. The mainstream competitive model has locally unique equilibria with respect to the real side of the economy; however, it manifests nominal...

The purpose of this paper is to assess the choice between adopting a monetary base or an interest rate setting instrument to maintain financial stability.  Our results suggest that the interest rate instrument is preferable, since during times of a panic or financial crisis the Central Bank...

We examine the impact of the Great Depression on the share of votes for right-wing anti-system parties in elections in the 1920s and 1930s.  We confirm the existence of a link between political extremism and economic hard times as captured by growth or contraction of the economy.  What...

Many previous studies of the role of trade during the British Industrial Revolution have found little or no role for trade in explaining British living standards or growth rates.  We construct a three-region model of the world in which Britain trades with North America and the rest of the...

There is an implicit consensus that 1930s exchange-rate regimes can be characterised as some variant of 'floating'.  This paper applies an adaptation of modern methodologies of exchange-rate regime classification to a panel of 47 countries in weekly observations between January 1919 and August...

This paper explores the determinants of sovereign bond yields during the classical gold standard period (1872-1913). Using the Pooled Mean Group methodology, we find that the main benefit of the gold standard can be seen as a short-hand device that enhanced a country`s reputation in...