Many mainstream economists, perhaps a majority of those who have an opinion, are opposed to tying a central bank’s hands with any explicit monetary rule. A clear majority oppose the gold standard, at least according to an often-cited survey. Why is that? First some preliminaries. By a…
At the Mercatus / Cato CMFA conference a few weeks ago on “Monetary Rules for a Post-Crisis World,” David Laidler and David Glasner gave interesting and informative talks on the history (and history of economic thought) regarding the evolution of monetary rules during the first panel. Video…
In this commentary, I will analyze the concept of sound money and its relevance today. The concept evolved in the 19th century as many countries adopted the gold standard. It became associated with commodity money or “hard currency.” For example, Mises (1966: 782) stated: The principle of…
Of course I didn't expect my recent post, listing "Ten Things Every Economist Should Know about the Gold Standard," to stop economists from repeating the same old misinformation. So I'm not surprised to find two of them, writing for a New York Fed blog, repeating recently some …
At the risk of sounding like a broken record (well, OK–at the risk of continuing to sound like a broken record), I'd like to say a bit more about economists' tendency to get their monetary history wrong. In particular, I'd like to take aim at common myths…