Common Currency versus Currency Union: The U.S. Continental Dollar and Denominational Structure, 1775-1779

Farley Grubb

No 15-10, Working Papers from University of Delaware, Department of Economics

Abstract: I use denominational structure (the spacing and size of monetary units) to explain how the Continental Congress attempted to manage a successful common currency when sub-national political entities were allowed to have separate currencies and run independent monetary policies. Congress created a common currency that was too large to use in ordinary transactions. Congress hoped this currency would be held for post-war redemption and would not circulate as money during the war. As such, it would not contribute to wartime inflation. By contrast, individual state currencies were emitted in small enough denominations to function as the domestic medium of exchange.

Keywords: bills of credit; legal tender; paper money; quantity theory of money; zero-coupon bonds. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E42 E52 H77 N11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lerner.udel.edu/sites/default/files/ECO ... 2015/UDWP2015-10.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.lerner.udel.edu/sites/default/files/ECON/PDFs/RePEc/dlw/WorkingPapers/2015/UDWP2015-10.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://lerner.udel.edu/sites/default/files/ECON/PDFs/RePEc/dlw/WorkingPapers/2015/UDWP2015-10.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dlw:wpaper:15-10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Delaware, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Saul Hoffman ().