Before the invention of money (coin, paper, or digital) there was barter trading, a form of exchange without the use of a monetary medium. The evolution of money has kept pace with the evolution of humans. Money was not invented solely for transaction purposes; it was created to quantify wealth...

The gold spot price is fixed by four banks every day at 10:30 am and 3 pm London time. This document describes a role-play simulation that replicates core features of the London gold fixing with the aim to better understand the incentives and the behaviour of the fixing participants. The game is...

We propose a simple model of the international monetary system. We study the world supply and demand for reserve assets denominated in different currencies under a variety of scenarios: a Hegemon vs. a multipolar world; abundant vs. scarce reserve assets; a gold exchange standard vs. a floating...

President George W. Bush famously remarked in July 2008 that during the housing boom “Wall Street got drunk... and now it has a hangover.” It was the Federal Reserve that spiked the punchbowl. The Fed sowed the seeds for the bust of 2007-08 by overexpanding credit, keeping interest rates too...

Currently the real, inflation-adjusted, price of gold is almost as high as it was in January 1980 and August 2011. Since 1975, periods of high real gold prices have occurred during periods of elevated concern about high future price inflation. Five years after the real price peaks in January...

In 1931, a financial crisis began in Austria, spread to Germany, forced Britain to abandon the gold standard, crossed the Atlantic, and afflicted financial institutions in the United States. This article describes how banks in New York City, the central money market of the United States, reacted...

In this paper we analyze the effect of central bank gold holdings on government bonds and exchange rates. We test the hypothesis that gold reserves build trust and thus reduce government bond yields and exchange rate volatility. The econometric analysis of a panel data set comprising a...

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the ways that politics and financial markets impact one another. In this relationship, politics is the ultimate controlling force. The kinds and prices of financial instruments that get traded and the individuals and institutions that get to trade...