The three exchange rate regimes adopted by Italy from 1883 up to the eve of World War I — the gold standard (1883-1893), floating rates (1894-1902), and “gold shadowing” (1903-1911) — produced a puzzling result: formal adherence to the gold standard ended in failure while shadowing the...

This paper inquires into monetary standards, focusing on the characteristics of money instead of the exchange rate regime. The transition from commodity to fiat money, a major break in monetary evolution, has led to international arrangements that represent an application of the competitive...

According to the New Monetary Economics (NME), the introduction of non-tangible payments media would altogether invalidate current monetary economics. After an illustration of the main tenets of the NME, critically analyses its rejection of both the quantity theory and liquidity preference on...

The optimum quantity of money proposition, whose validity is agreed on, is actually open to criticism. The present paper argues that the weaknesses of the Friedman Rule from the application of the welfare theorems of general equilibrium theory to a monetary economy and shows how, the consistency...

The Bretton Woods agreements set up the post-war monetary order on the basis of fixed exchange rates and autonomous national economic policy. Changes in parity were allowed in the case of fundamental disequilibrium, but this concept was not defined, promoting a lengthy but sterile debate. This...

In this paper, recent contributions to the legal restrictions theory of money are critically examined from the perspective of received monetary economics. In particular, it is shown that, contrary to some interpretations, M. Friedman's work on the optimum quantity of money does not support the...

Classical economists developed a surprisingly sophisticated analysis of money supply variations that, anticipating the main features of contemporary theory, emphasizes the role of information in the transmission mechanism. Drawing on the classical contributions, this paper outlines a general...