Technologies of money in the Middle Ages: the 'Principles of Minting'

Oliver Volckart

Economic History Working Papers from London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History

Abstract: The paper discusses which options medieval political authorities had to satisfy the demand for complex currencies. It distinguishes several models, each of which caused problems: A first one, where the basic unit was supplemented by a range of other denominations whose weight and purity where exactly proportional. While this did not take the proportionally larger labour costs involved in the production of small change into account, the second model did: here, small change had an over proportionally high content of base metal. In consequence, the stable numerical ratios between units of the same currency began to shift. The third option involved using gold for high purchasing power coins; a strategy that made currencies vulnerable to changes in the relative market prices of gold and silver. Again, the outcome was a that the numerical ratios between units of the same currency became instable. The paper discusses how political authorities chose between these options, how they supplied their mints with the necessary bullion and how minting was organised.

Keywords: Medieval monetary policies; mining; minting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E42 E52 N13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2018-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-mac, nep-mon and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/87152/ Open access version. (application/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:ehl:wpaper:87152

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic History Working Papers from London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History LSE, Dept. of Economic History Houghton Street London, WC2A 2AE, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager on behalf of EH Dept. ().