The big problem of small change

Thomas Sargent and Francois Velde ()

No WP-97-08, Working Paper Series, Macroeconomic Issues from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Abstract: Western Europe was plagued with currency shortages from the 14th century, at which a 'standard formula' had been devised to cure the problem. We use a cash-in-advance model of commodity money to define a currency shortage, show that they could develop and persist under commodity money regime, and analyze the role played by each ingredient in the standard formula. A companion paper documents the evolution of monetary theory, monetary experiments and minting technology over the course of six hundred years.

Keywords: Monetary theory; Money; Money theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publicati ... pers/1997/wp97_8.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Big Problem of Small Change (1999)
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:fip:fedhma:wp-97-08

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series, Macroeconomic Issues from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lauren Wiese ().