When money was made of gold and silver, individuals faced the problem of determining the intrinsic content of coins in many exchange situations. In this paper we look at a well-documented solution to this problem, and a key institution of the commodity money system: coin assaying. To that goal...

How beneficial is a fully recognizable money to the economy? This paper answers this question for the commodity money system. We build a model in which money is made of precious metal coins, yet its intrinsic quality is imperfectly recognizable by sellers. Based on historical evidence, we allow...

This paper shows that modern monetary theory can be better understood through the differences between Menger and Walras. Since the 1980s attempts to establish coherent microfoundations for monetary exchange have brought Menger's theory of the origin of money to the forefront and sent walrasian...

The financial market was very developed in France in the years before World War I and subsequently many newspapers provided information to investors. Yet, contemporaries blamed the inaccuracy and biases of the financial press. This study implements a quantitative test to assess this judgment....

This paper is an empirical study of the distribution of black prices among 120 Bavarian locations at two dates, the beginning of July, 1947 and the end of June, 1948. It shows huge differences in the liquidity of those goods either when measured with the coefficient of variation or the number of...

This article analyzes the economics of “badmouthing” in the context of the pre-1914 French capital market. We argue that badmouthing was a means through which racketeering journals sought to secure property rights over issuers’ reputation. We provide a theoretical study of the market setup...