Monetary policy has traditionally been viewed as theprocess by which a central bank uses its influence overthe supply of money to promote its economic objectives. Forexample, Milton Friedman (1959, p. 24) defined the tools ofmonetary policy to be those “powers that enable the [FederalReserve]...

[...]This paper examines how repo contracting conventionsevolved in the 1980s. In the next section, we consider therevival of repo financing in the 1950s and the contractingconventions associated with that revival. Section 3 describeshow the rising level and volatility of interest rates and...

[...]In this paper, I survey the academic literature onblockholders and corporate control. As with any survey paper,I must be selective. Thus, I focus on empirical research, as Ibelieve that much of what we know about blockholders hascome through empirical investigations as opposed totheoretical...

[...]The overall conclusion drawn from the research presented isthat monetary policy appears to have less of an impact on realactivity than it once had—but the cause of that change remainsan open issue. The conference papers explored threehypotheses en route to that finding. First, the...

[...]In our view, this apparently surprising immunity of the U.S.economy to the Asia crisis reflects the fact that the original wayof thinking about the crisis was flawed. First, it focused only ondemand-side channels and ignored the supply side. Second, thedepreciation of the Asian currencies...

By analysing a newly compiled database of exchange rates, this paper finds that Central European financial integration advanced in a cyclical fashion over the fifteenth century. The cycles were associated with changes in the money supply. Long-distance financial integration progressed in...

In England, across the whole period of the Great Debasement, the mint issued six different kinds of silver coins and three kinds of gold coins. According to Gresham’s Law, coins with the same face value but different intrinsic values can not circulate side by side for too long: only those...

On 5 December 1925, the ‘Portuguese Bank Note Bubble’ burst. The Lisbon daily newspaper, O Século (The Century), revealed the swindle in the headline ‘O Pais em Crise’ (The Country in Crisis). The article describes how twenty-eight year old white-collar worker, Artur Virgilio Alves...

Economic measurements are generated by complicated systems of measurement involving economic and bureaucratic processes. Whether these measuring instruments produce reliable numbers: ‘facts’ that travel well, depends on the qualities of these systems. Ideas from metrology, and from the...

This paper reassesses and extends Hawke’s passenger railway social savings for England and Wales. Better estimates of coach costs and evidence that third class passengers would otherwise have walked reduce Hawke’s social savings by two-thirds. We calculate railway speeds, and the amount and...