Which monetary regime is associated with the most stable price level? A commodity money regime such as the classical gold standard has long been associated with long-run price stability. But critics of the day argued that the regime was associated with too much short-run price variability and...

The paper provides a formalisation of the monetary folk proposition that fiat base money is an asset of the holder but not a liability of the issuer. The issuance of irredeemable fiat base money can have pure fiscal effects on private demand. With irredeemable fiat base money, weak restrictions...

Beginning in 1712, North Carolina's assembly emitted its own paper money and maintained some amount of paper money in public circulation for the rest of the colonial period. Yet, data on colonial North Carolina's paper money regime in the current literature are thin and often erroneous. We...

The quantity theory of money is applied to the paper money regimes of seven of the nine British North American colonies south of New England. Individual colonies, and regional groupings of contiguous colonies treated as one monetary unit, are tested. Little to no statistical relationship, and...

Can competition among privately issued fiat currencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum work? Only sometimes. To show this, we build a model of competition among privately issued fiat currencies. We modify the current workhorse of monetary economics, the Lagos-Wright environment, by including...

I decompose Virginia's paper money into expected real-asset present value, risk discount, and transaction premium or "moneyness" value. The value of Virginia's paper money was determined primarily by its real-asset present value. The transaction premium was small. Positive risk discounts...

I reconstruct the data on Virginia's paper money regime using forensic accounting techniques. I correct the existing data on the amounts authorized and outstanding. In addition, I reconstruct yearly data on previously unknown aspects of Virginia's paper money regime, including printings, net new...

Despite advances in transactions technologies, paper currency still constitutes a notable percentage of the money supply in most countries. For example, it constitutes roughly 10% of the US Federal Reserve's main monetary aggregate, M2. Yet, it has important drawbacks. First, it can help...

Forensic accounting is used to reconstruct the data on emissions, redemptions, and bills outstanding for colonial New Jersey paper money. These components are further separated into the amounts initially legislated, and the amounts actually executed. These data are substantial improvements over...

The purpose of this paper is to convince the reader that the Continental dollar was a zero-interest bearer bond and not a fiat currency--thereby overturning 230 years of scholarly interpretation; to show that the public and leading Americans knew and acted on this fact, and to illustrate the...