The Duration of Book Credit in Colonial New England

David Flynn

Economic History from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Account books show that merchants frequently used book credit in exchanges with consumers. The ability of credit to act as a substitute for currency in payments depends on the terms attached to the credit, such as its duration. Employing lifetable analysis and the singulate mean age at marriage, I arrive at expected duration estimates in excess of those in the literature. Given the expected duration, book credit seems a good substitute for other forms of payment. If this is the case, I argue that a major revision of literature on colonial monetary matters may be in order.

Keywords: book credit; demography; singulate mean age at marriage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2004-07-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: Type of Document - doc; pages: 27. Tables and Figures at the end.
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