We argue that measurement error in historical price data has led researchers to erroneously believe that there was little persistence of inflation during the 19th century. Using a statistical technique that accounts for these errors, we estimate the persistence of (a) US inflation and (b)...

The Great Depression is the canonical case of a widespread currency war, with more than 70 countries devaluing their currencies relative to gold between 1929 and 1936. What were the currency war’s effects on trade flows? We use newly-compiled, highfrequency bilateral trade data and gravity...

Today all countries have fiat money issued by a central bank. There is no obligation by a central bank to exchange its money for gold or any other good. Central banks have the monopoly to issue central bank money and have the power to create their money out of nothing. Creating such a monetary...

We argue that Gibson's paradox has nothing to do with the Gold Standard per se, and it rather originates from low-frequency variation in the natural rate of interest under certain types of monetary regimes that make inflation I(0) and (approximately) zero-mean. Although the Gold Standard is the...

Recent crises have cast doubt on the legitimacy of technocratic power, yet its role in global economic governance remains poorly understood. Revisiting the collapse of Bretton Woods, we propose a dynamic theory of global monetary governance to explain how expanding central bank discretion can...

We argue that measurement error in historical price data has led researchers to erroneously believe that there was little persistence of inflation during the 19th century. Using a statistical technique that accounts for these errors, we estimate the persistence of (a) US inflation and (b)...

This paper provides an introduction to the special issue on international lending of last resort. Starting from debates about rescue operations and unconventional policies of major central banks in the contexts of the Global Financial Crisis and the European Debt Crisis, it draws attention to...

The author argues that the idea, that the Bank of England accepted Walter Bagehot's recommendations from around the 1870s onwards and adopted the role of lender of last resort for the British financial markets, is a misconception. The published balance sheets give this impression, but a closer...

We estimate the causal impact of countercyclical interest rates on macroeconomic outcomes in open economies. To identify countercyclical interest rates, we construct a new database of short-term interest rates, principal exports, and international commodity prices for 40 economies from 1870 to...

This paper studies the predictability of stock returns using monthly data on eight markets over the period 1876-1913. In contrast to much of the existing literature I find broad predictability across stock markets. Market interest rates and seasonal dummies generally have predictive power, and...

We identify two approaches to financial crises in the history of political economy, namely, the exogenous approach whereby financial crises are sudden events, and the endogenous approach whereby they arise from a long process. In focusing on the endogenous approach, we study the contributions by...

The Great Depression is the canonical case of a widespread currency war, with more than 70 countries devaluing their currencies relative to gold between 1929 and 1936. What were the currency war's effects on trade flows? We use newly-compiled, highfrequency bilateral trade data and gravity...

Today all countries have fiat money issued by a central bank. There is no obligation by a central bank to exchange its money for gold or any other good. Central banks have the monopoly to issue central bank money and have the power to create their money out of nothing. Creating such a monetary...

In this article I have analysed the long-term relationship between US M2 money supply and the price of gold per troy ounce using Engle-Granger cointegration. The analysis shows the existence of long-term price dependency of gold in relation to US M2 money supply. M2 was used in two variants,...

We examine the relationship between gold prices and the U.S. dollar exchange rate, arguing that their interactions are state-dependent and asymmetric under different market conditions. State dependency hinges on different short-term interest rate zones. To prove this point, we determine three...

Illicit gold flows constitute a major development challenge for governments and a social responsibility challenge for many industries along gold supply chains, including gold refiners and jewelry retailers. This paper highlights aspects of gold supply chains that lack transparency and may...

We argue that Gibson's paradox has nothing to do with the Gold Standard per se, and it rather originates from low-frequency variation in the natural rate of interest under certain types of monetary regimes that make inflation I(0) and (approximately) zero-mean. Although the Gold Standard is the...

Robert Triffin (1911-1993) was one of the main protagonists in the international monetary debates in the postwar period. He became famous with his book Gold and the Dollar Crisis, published in 1960, in which he predicted the end of the Bretton Woods system. In his analysis there, Triffin was...

This paper presents and explains the newly rediscovered and transcribed daily market gold price from 1919-1968 for the world's main gold market during the period, the London Gold Fixing Auction. The paper highlights several novel features previously not discussed in the literature, such as gold...

COVID-19 and SARS are epidemics which have influenced the largest global economic crisis in recent years. This research reveals that both SARS and COVID-19 have led to fluctuations in the prices of gold and the US dollar index; however, there is no direct causal relationship be-tween COVID-19...

Numerous turbulent events in the recent past have raised the issue of an asset that could play the role of safe haven. Although for many years it was considered that gold has the role of a safe haven, an increasing number of recent works challenge such a point of view. The emergence of...

Evidence from the 2022 Ukraine war suggests that, for diversification purposes, gold and bitcoin are complements rather than substitutes during crises. Precisely, this paper shows that (i) gold is a diversifier for European stocks and oil and a hedge for US stocks and T-bills, while Bitcoin is a...