The purpose of the paper is to present a tractable model of an old topic which is becoming more important in macroeconomics: the link between financial structure and economic activity.

The concept of inflation in the Roman empire. The Bimetallic system used in the Roman empire allowed emperors to debase their coinage repeatedly, while the exchange rates remained almost intact. This situation caused changes in the use of silver coinage. Specifically, silver antoniniani were...

The position taken by William Barnett in this panel discussion is that federal government agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, view researchers as being among those who comprise the audience for produced data, but not necessarily the most important members of that audience....

We report that the price of a 6.5oz Coke was 5¢ from 1886 until 1959. Thus, we are documenting a nominal price rigidity that lasted more than 70 years! The case of Coca-Cola is particularly interesting because during the 70-year period there were substantial changes in the soft drink industry...

This study formalizes and empirically tests the conjecture that the discovery of large silver reserves in its American colonies triggered in Spain a phenomenon known as the Dutch disease,diverting factors of production to non-traded goods industries and undermining the Spanishcomparative...

The windfall acquisition of precious metals from American mines and the military revolution of the Early Modern age allowed the Spanish monarchs to command large amounts of credit andpursue an expansive imperial policy unlike that of any other Early Modern nation; when the costof the Empire...

Compared to many cross-country studies on the determinants of growth rate, time series approaches are relatively few and limited in scope. However, time series studies are useful for country-specific policies. But in many recent works ad hoc specifications have been used to analyze the...

This page is forthcoming in the journal, Macroeconomic Dynamics, as an Announcement from the Editor. The page provides information about the conversion of the journal's submission procedure from on-paper to all electronic. The new system was created by Stephen Spear and is maintained by him on...

Agent-based computational economics (ACE) is the computational study of economies modeled as evolving systems of autonomous interacting agents. Starting from initial conditions, specified by the modeler, the computational economy evolves over time as its constituent agents repeatedly interact...