Money Markets and Exchange Rates in Preindustrial Europe

The article studies the evolution of the constitutional arrangements in seventeenth-century England following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It focuses on the relationship between institutions and the behavior of the government and interprets the institutional changes on the basis of the goals of the winners—secure property rights, protection of their wealth, and the elimination of confiscatory government. We argue that the new institutions allowed the government to commit credibly to upholding property rights. Their success was remarkable, as the evidence from capital markets shows.

Officer begins this book with a historical perspective of the monetary standards of the United States and Britain. He then develops data on exchange rates, mint parity and gold points, with which he investigates three important features of Anglo-American monetary history. First, the integration of the American foreign-exchange market over time. Second, it is proved that gold-point arbitrage is markedly more efficient than either interest arbitrage or forward speculation. Third, regime efficiency is explored from standpoints of both private agents and policy-makers; the 1925–1931 gold standard, though less durable than the pre-war standard, is nevertheless shown to be surprisingly stable. The book will serve as a Dollar-Sterling handbook for those interested in this important aspect of international monetary history.