"John Law's System was a radical restructuring of French public finances, carried out from 1716 to 1720. It involved on the one hand a conversion of the existing French public debt into something like government equity, on the other hand the replacement of commodity money with fiat money. For...

"We study how competition from privately supplied currency substitutes affects monetary equilibria. Whenever currency is inefficiently provided, inside money competition plays a disciplinary role by providing an upper bound on equilibrium inflation rates. Furthermore, if Furthermore, if 'inside...

"Why is inflation persistently high in some periods and low in others? The reason may be absence of commitment in monetary policy. In a standard model, absence of commitment leads to multiple equilibria, or expectation traps, even without trigger strategies. In these traps, expectations of high...