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Journal Article
Gresham's law or Gresham's fallacy?
In this article, the authors argue the answer to their title depends on whether a qualifier is added to the standard version of the law that "bad money drives out good." By examining several historical episodes, they find instances where bad money (valued more at the mint than in the market) failed to drive out good money (valued less at the mint than in the market). Rolnick and Weber next explain why the common qualifier to this law, which requires the mint to fix the rate of exchange at face value, does not reinstate the law. The common qualifier fails to give plausible reasons for how ...
Journal Article
Interview with Joseph E. Stiglitz
When Joseph Stiglitz was named to the president's Council of Economic Advisers in 1993, one pundit named the group "the dream team of economics," and another writer later dubbed him the council's "idea man."
Working Paper
After Penn Square: the insurance dilemma
Journal Article
Interview with Stanley Fischer
Journal Article
Early childhood development on a large scale
Working Paper
The debasement puzzle: an essay on medieval monetary policy
This paper establishes the stylized fact that medieval debasements were accompanied by unusually large minting volumes and revenues. This fact is a puzzle under the commonly held view that metallic coins are commodity money and exchange by weight. An existing explanation is that debased coins were used to reduce the real burden of nominally denominated debts. This explanation is logically flawed: nothing prevents agents from renegotiating contracts and avoid incurring minting costs. The paper also establishes other facts about monetary mutations, which altogether pose a challenge to monetary ...
Journal Article
Money, inflation, and output under fiat and commodity standards
This study examines the behavior of money, inflation, and output under fiat and commodity standards to better understand how changes in monetary policy affect economic activity. Using long-term historical data for 15 countries, the study finds that the growth rates of various monetary aggregates are more highly correlated with inflation and with each other under fiat standards than under commodity standards. Money growth, inflation, and output growth are also higher under fiat standards. In contrast, the study does not find that money growth is more highly correlated with output growth under ...
Journal Article
Interview with Ping Xie, People's Republic of China
Working Paper
The case for branch banking in Montana