This paper is an empirical study of the distribution of black prices among 120 Bavarian locations at two dates, the beginning of July, 1947 and the end of June, 1948. It shows huge differences in the liquidity of those goods either when measured with the coefficient of variation or the number of...

The financial market was very developed in France in the years before World War I and subsequently many newspapers provided information to investors. Yet, contemporaries blamed the inaccuracy and biases of the financial press. This study implements a quantitative test to assess this judgment....

This paper shows that modern monetary theory can be better understood through the differences between Menger and Walras. Since the 1980s attempts to establish coherent microfoundations for monetary exchange have brought Menger's theory of the origin of money to the forefront and sent walrasian...

This article analyzes the economics of “badmouthing” in the context of the pre-1914 French capital market. We argue that badmouthing was a means through which racketeering journals sought to secure property rights over issuers’ reputation. We provide a theoretical study of the market setup...

Gresham’s law, which says that bad money tends to drive good money out of circulation, may account for many nations’ episodes of money troubles, as far back as ancient Athens. This Commentary discusses the two main explanations for Gresham’s law and suggests some circumstances in which the...

This paper develops a model of currency circulation under asymmetric information. Agents are heterogeneous and trade in bilateral matches. Coins are intrinsically valuable and are available in two weights, light and heavy. We characterize the equilibrium under complete information and under...

When goods are sold through competing auctions, what e¤ect does monetary policy have on the equilibrium allocation? To answer, we extend the competing auctions framework in several ways: buyers choose how much money they bring to an auction, the quantities traded at the auctions are endogenous,...

We investigate the time-series properties of Australian and New Zealand real interest rates within a Markov-switching framework. This enables us to identify characteristics in real interest rate behavior hitherto unacknowledged. We find that rates switch between alternative stationary regimes...

There always exists a monetary equilibrium when search is directed, money is indivisible and production is on demand (Julien Kennes King 2007). We demonstrate that when production takes place before exchange, forcing sellers to incur a sunk cost, there must be a minimum buyer-seller ratio for...