[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
  EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

A Common Currency: Early U.S. Monetary Policy and the Transition to the Dollar

Peter Rousseau

No 10702, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The transition of the U.S. money supply from the mixture of paper bills of credit, certificates, and foreign coins that circulated at various exchange rates with the British pound sterling during the colonial period to the unified dollar standard of the early national period was rapid and had far-reaching consequences. This paper documents the transition and highlights the importance of this standardization in bringing order to the nation's finances and in facilitating the accumulation and intermediation of capital. It describes how the struggle of the colonies to maintain viable substitutes for hard money set the stage for the financial leaders of the Federalist period, led by Alexander Hamilton, to settle upon the dollar, attach it to a convertible metallic base, and create a national Bank that issued notes denominated in the new monetary unit. It also presents recently-constructed estimates of the U.S. money stock for 1790-1820 and relates them to measures of the nation's early modernization.

JEL-codes: E44 N11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-his, nep-ifn, nep-mac and nep-mon
Note: DAE IFM ME
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Rousseau, Peter L., 2006. "A common currency: early US monetary policy and the transition to the dollar," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(01), pages 97-122, April.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10702.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:nbr:nberwo:10702

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10702

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().

 
Page updated 2024-12-28
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10702