Reconstruction of the Spanish money supply, 1492–1810

Yao Chen, Nuno Palma and Felix Ward

Explorations in Economic History, 2021, vol. 81, issue C

Abstract: How did the Spanish money supply evolve in the aftermath of the discovery of large amounts of precious metals in Spanish America? We synthesize the available data on the mining of precious metals and their international flow to estimate the money supply for Spain from 1492 to 1810. Our estimate suggests that the Spanish money supply increased more than ten-fold. Viewed through the equation of exchange this money supply increase can account for most of the price level rise in early modern Spain.

Keywords: Early modern period; Equation of exchange; Quantity theory of money (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 E51 N13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001449832100019X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Reconstruction of the Spanish Money Supply, 1492-1810 (2021)
Working Paper: Reconstruction of the Spanish money supply, 1492-1810 (2020)
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:eee:exehis:v:81:y:2021:i:c:s001449832100019x

DOI: 10.1016/j.eeh.2021.101401

Access Statistics for this article

Explorations in Economic History is currently edited by R.H. Steckel

More articles in Explorations in Economic History from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().