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

Drawing on monthly data for 12 European countries, this paper asks whether countries under the Classical Gold Standard followed the so-called “rules of the game” and, if so, whether the external constraint implied by these rules was more binding for the periphery than for the core. Our...