The crime of 1873: back to the scene

Francois Velde ()

No WP-02-29, Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Abstract: Milton Friedman's (1990) counterfactual analysis of what would have happened if the United States had not abandoned bimetallism in 1873 is revisited in a general equilibrium model of bimetallism. I find that bimetallism would have survived and the gold-silver ratio would have remained stable for another twenty years. If countries such as India that abandoned silver because of its depreciation are assumed not to, bimetallism survives to World War I. But the United States would have experienced a sharp bout of inflation in the early 20th century, although milder if India stays on silver.

Keywords: Bimetallism; Silver (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publicati ... s/2002/wp2002-29.pdf (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:fip:fedhwp:wp-02-29

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

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