Irving Fisher and Price-Level Targeting in Austria: Was Silver the Answer?

Richard Burdekin, Kris James Mitchener and Marc Weidenmier ()

No 17123, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The question of price level versus inflation targeting remains controversial. Disagreement concerns, not so much the desirability of price stability, but rather the means of achieving it. Irving Fisher argued for a commodity dollar standard where the purchasing power of money was fixed by indexing it to a basket of commodities. We show that movements in the price of silver closely track the movements in overall prices during the classical gold standard era. The one-to-one relationship between paper and silver bonds suggests that a simple "silver rule" could have sufficed to fix the purchasing power of money.

JEL-codes: E31 E4 E58 N1 N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-mac and nep-mon
Note: DAE ME
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Richard C.K. Burdekin & Kris James Mitchener & Marc D. Weidenmier, 2012. "Irving Fisher and Price‐Level Targeting in Austria: Was Silver the Answer?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(4), pages 733-750, 06.

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