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Finance and Financial Management Commons

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CRIF Working Paper series

2003

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Full-Text Articles in Finance and Financial Management

The Economics Of International Monies, Gerald P. Dwyer Jr., James R. Lothian Sep 2003

The Economics Of International Monies, Gerald P. Dwyer Jr., James R. Lothian

CRIF Working Paper series

The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of international monies and the theory related to their adoption and use. We summarize the history of international monies, beginning with a discussion of the gold solidus introduced in the fourth century by the Emperor Constantine, continuing with the currencies of the Italian city states and ending with the currencies that have functioned as international monies from the early modern period to the present. We identify four key characteristics of these currencies: high unitary value; relatively low inflation rates for long periods; issuance by major economic and trading powers; and …


The Behavior Of Money And Other Economic Variables: Two Natural Experiments, James R. Lothian, Cornelia H, Mccarthy Jan 2003

The Behavior Of Money And Other Economic Variables: Two Natural Experiments, James R. Lothian, Cornelia H, Mccarthy

CRIF Working Paper series

Every once in a great while, history provides us with a natural experiment, an episode in which a major change in a key economic variable occurs that has no direct relation to the contemporaneous behavior of the variables that theory suggests it ought to effect.1 A classic example was the currency reform during the U.S. Civil War by the Confederacy in spring 1864. A second was provided by the massive inflow of specie from the New World to Spain in the sixteenth century. In the first of these examples, a rapidly growing money stock suddenly fell and a decline in …