Using local administrative data from 1826 to 1936 we document the evolution of crime rates in 19th century France and we estimate the impact of a negative income shock on crime. Our identification strategy exploits the phylloxera crisis. Between 1863 and 1890, phylloxera destroyed about 40% of...

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....

We study the role played by coin experts, called moneychangers, in the metallic money system. To do that, we introduce intermediaries that can expertise and certify coins into the VeldeWeber and Wright’s (1999) model of commodity money with imperfectly recognizable coins. We show under which...

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...

We wish to thank Andrea Bassanini, Cecilia Garcia-Peñalosa, Tommy Murphy, Tommaso Nannicini and seminar participants at University Bocconi for useful comments and discussions. Charlotte Coutand and Clement Malgouyres provided excellent research assistance. We also thank Pierre-Emmanuel Couralet...

This paper analyzes a two-country model of currency, banks and endogenous default to study whether impediments to credit market integration across jurisdictions impact the desirability of a currency union. We show that when those impediments induce a higher cost for banks to manage cross-border...

This paper analyzes a two-country model of money and banks to examine the conditions under which the creation of a monetary union between two countries is optimal. Is is shown that if agents resort to banks to adjust their monetary holdings through borrowing and if nobody can force them to repay...

Based on an historical study of the cigarette money episode, we construct a commodity money model that explain the different types of means of payments used in post WW 2 Germany. After having shown that the basic features of exchanges were close to the assumptions of the search-theoretic...