This paper argues that the relatively voluminous surviving records about foreign exchange (FX) rates in the Middle Ages can help to illuminate the much murkier question of medieval interest rates. We first explain how the medieval FX market operated and its links to the money market. Next, we...

This paper will show how the relatively voluminous surviving records about exchange rates in the middle ages can help to illuminate the much murkier question of medieval interest rates. We will first explain how the medieval FX market operated and its links to the money market. Next, we will set...

This paper employs a unique, hand-collected dataset of exchange rates for five major currencies (the lira of Barcelona, the pound sterling of England, the pond groot of Flanders, the florin of Florence and the livre tournois of France) to consider whether the law of one price and purchasing...

This paper employs a unique, hand-collected dataset of exchange rates for five major currencies (the lira of Barcelona, the pound sterling of England, the pond groot of Flanders, the florin of Florence and the livre tournois of France) to consider whether the law of one price and purchasing...

Research into medieval interest rates has been hampered by the diversity of terms and methods used by historians, creating serious misconceptions in the reporting of medieval interest rates, which have then been taken at face value by later scholars. This has had important repercussions on the...

Testing the tradeoff between child quantity and quality within a family is complicated by the endogeneity of family size. Using data from the Chinese Population Census, this paper examines the effect of family size on child educational attainment in China. We find a negative correlation between...

We study the market for factual content and ask whether competition increases or decreases its provision. Factual content is supplied by commercial media who observe a set of facts depicting the true state of the world and selectively decide how to report them. Consumers value content that...

Evidence shows that marketers can direct consumers' limited attention to specific product attributes by making them “prominent”. This research asks: How should firms decide which attribute to make prominent in competitive environments? A key feature of this setting is that consumers'...