Before the invention of money (coin, paper, or digital) there was barter trading, a form of exchange without the use of a monetary medium. The evolution of money has kept pace with the evolution of humans. Money was not invented solely for transaction purposes; it was created to quantify wealth...

The gold standard emerged as the international monetary system by the end of the 19th century. We formally study its properties in a micro-founded model and find that the scarcity of the world gold stock not only results in a suboptimal output of goods that are purchased with money but also...

We investigate the feasibility of minting gold coins with a face value in excess of their bullion value, to circulate as currency alongside paper money. The problem is modelled in a partial equilibrium setting where individuals hold money because they face unpredictable liquidity shocks. Gold...

The classical gold standard has long been associated with long-run price stability. But short-run price variability led critics of the gold standard to propose reforms that look much like modern versions of price path targeting. This paper uses a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to...

In the Middle Ages, tens of thousands types of uni-faced bracteate coins were struck in the period 1140−1520. The existence of hundreds of small independent currency areas with their own mints in central, eastern, and northern Europe and the strong link between bracteates and periodic...

We propose a simple model of the international monetary system. We study the world supply and demand for reserve assets denominated in different currencies under a variety of scenarios: a Hegemon vs. a multipolar world; abundant vs. scarce reserve assets; a gold exchange standard vs. a floating...

Milton Friedman's (1990) counterfactual analysis of what would have happened if the United States had not abandoned bimetallism in 1873 is revisited in a general equilibrium model of bimetallism. I find that bimetallism would have survived and the gold-silver ratio would have remained stable for...

This paper presents a model of the gold standard in which technology and preferences are modelled explicitly, and account is taken of both the durability of gold and the exhaustibility of gold ore. We examine the steady state and its associated dynamics, and show how the steady-state price level...