By analysing a newly compiled database of exchange rates, this paper finds that Central European financial integration advanced in a cyclical fashion over the fifteenth century. The cycles were associated with changes in the money supply. Long-distance financial integration progressed in...

In England, across the whole period of the Great Debasement, the mint issued six different kinds of silver coins and three kinds of gold coins. According to Gresham’s Law, coins with the same face value but different intrinsic values can not circulate side by side for too long: only those...

On 5 December 1925, the ‘Portuguese Bank Note Bubble’ burst. The Lisbon daily newspaper, O Século (The Century), revealed the swindle in the headline ‘O Pais em Crise’ (The Country in Crisis). The article describes how twenty-eight year old white-collar worker, Artur Virgilio Alves...

Economic measurements are generated by complicated systems of measurement involving economic and bureaucratic processes. Whether these measuring instruments produce reliable numbers: ‘facts’ that travel well, depends on the qualities of these systems. Ideas from metrology, and from the...

This paper reassesses and extends Hawke’s passenger railway social savings for England and Wales. Better estimates of coach costs and evidence that third class passengers would otherwise have walked reduce Hawke’s social savings by two-thirds. We calculate railway speeds, and the amount and...

This paper discusses the problems that arise from interest subsidies in the UK system of student loans; systems in other countries, for example Australia and New Zealand, face similar problems. The topic appears to be narrow and technical, and of significance only to the most nerdy of...

This paper studies determinants of MPs expense claims in Parlia-ment using the data released under the freedom of information act in2004. Using a multiple regression framework, we correlate expenseswith three sets of variables: constituency characteristics, party a¢ l-iation and individual...

Economic transition lowered happiness on average, but did not affect allequally. This paper uses Hungarian survey data to study the impact ofreligion and economic transition on happiness. Religious involvementcontributes positively to individuals’ self-reported well-being.Controlling for...

Monetary policy has traditionally been viewed as theprocess by which a central bank uses its influence overthe supply of money to promote its economic objectives. Forexample, Milton Friedman (1959, p. 24) defined the tools ofmonetary policy to be those “powers that enable the [FederalReserve]...

[...]This paper examines how repo contracting conventionsevolved in the 1980s. In the next section, we consider therevival of repo financing in the 1950s and the contractingconventions associated with that revival. Section 3 describeshow the rising level and volatility of interest rates and...