This study examines the pricing of U.S. state banknotes before 1860 using discount data from New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. The study determines whether these banknotes were priced consistent with their expected net redemption value as securities are. The evidence is mixed....

single coinage ones.

the smaller coin is used to make change in some transactions, and shortages of small coins hurts the poor. The predictions of the model are evaluated against England's experience with silver and gold coins.

Contemporaries and economic historians have noted several features of medieval and early modern European monetary systems that are hard to analyze using models of centralized exchange. For example, contemporaries complained of recurrent shortages of small change and argued that an...