Re-coinage implies that old coins are declared invalid and exchanged for new ones at fixed exchange rates and dates. Empirical evidence shows that re-coinage could occur as often as twice a year within a currency area in the Middle Ages. The exchange fee at re-coinage worked as a monetary tax...

By setting bounds on money growth, the commodity standard is a solution to the monetary authority's time inconsistency problem, which arises from the fixed wage structure of the economy. If there is a supply shock to the backing commodity, the suspension of the commodity standard may be...

The classical gold standard has long been associated with long-run price stability. But short-run price variability led critics of the gold standard to propose reforms that look much like modern versions of price path targeting. This paper uses a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to...

Currency debasement, defined as a loss of precious metal content (intrinsic value) of the circulating penny currencies over time, was a common feature in the monetary history of Europe, c. 1400–1900. Over the centuries the loss rate was sustained; between 1400 and 1900 A. D. the (south) German...

This essay examines Norwegian monetary policy under the final decades of the classical international gold standard regime prior to World War I. While the evidence clearly demonstrates that the commitment to gold convertibility was the overall objective, the character of monetary policy was...

Is a strong commitment to monetary stability enough to ensure credibility? The recent literature suggests it might not be if the central bank cannot perform pure interest rate policy and has to resort to balance sheet policy: the central bank's financial strength (i.e. the long-term...

According to the classical view, an economy's lender of last resort should be its central bank. For brief periods of time, the bank might suspend convertibility in order to provide the liquidity needed to support the domestic credit market. Recent experience of financial crises demonstrates the...

This paper studies the role of bank notes issued by the private Enskilda banks in the expansion of the Swedish monetary stock under the classic specie standard maintained during the period 1834-1913. The use of balance sheets has made possible the estimation of more accurate and continuous...

In 1871-73, newly unified Germany adopted the gold standard, replacing the silver-based currencies that had been prevalent in most German states until then. The reform sparked a series of steps in other countries that ultimately ended global bimetallism, i.e., a near-universal fixed exchange...