Drawing from the personal tape recordings made during the presidency of Richard Nixon, we uncover and report in this paper new evidence that Nixon manipulated Arthur Burns and the Federal Reserve Bank into creating a political business cycle that helped secure Nixon’s reelection victory in...

Paper money has often been controversial and misunderstood. Why it has value, why that value changes over time, how it influences economic activity, who should be allowed to make it, how its use and creation should be controlled, and whether it should exist at all—are questions that have...

The War for Independence (1775-1783) left the federal government deeply in debt. The spoils from winning that war also gave it an empire of land. So, post-1783 was the federal government solvent, or at what point did it become solvent? Did winning the war, in effect, pay for the war? While these...

The British North American colonies were the first western economies to rely on legislature-issued fiat paper money as their principal internal medium of exchange. This system arose piecemeal across the colonies making the paper money creation story for each colony unique. It was true monetary...

For the six major British North American colonies, five of whom independently issued their own fiat paper money, exchange rates between these colonies are constructed and combined with price indices to test purchasing power parity between these colonies. Purchasing power parity is then tested...

The U.S. Congress issued paper money called Continental Dollars to finance the American Revolution. The story of the Continental Dollar is familiar to all -- a lot were issued and hyper-inflation ensued. However, the details of this story are less well known. Scholars even disagree over how much...

The monetary powers embedded in the U.S. Constitution were revolutionary and led to a watershed transformation in the nation’s monetary structure. They included determining what monies could be legal tender, who could emit fiat paper money, and who could incorporate banks. How the debate at...