Monetary Constitution Research Articles

Pringle: A Paradigm Shift in the European Union's Monetary Constitution

The reference from the Irish Supreme Court seeking a preliminary ruling in thePringlecase concerns the compatibility of the Treaty establishing the European Stability Mechanism (hereinafter ESM Treaty or ESMT) with European Union (EU) law. The Irish Supreme Court was concerned with the legal significance of Council Decision 2011/199, which amended the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) by inserting a third paragraph in Art 136 TFEU. The new Art 136(3) provides that the Member States whose currency is the euro, may establish a mechanism such as the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) so long as that mechanism is only activated when indispensable to safeguarding the stability of the euro area as a whole, and only if the financial assistance is made subject to strict conditionality. But, because Decision 2011/199 has not yet been ratified by all Member States, the TFEU has not yet been amended. The ESMT nevertheless entered into force at the end of September 2012, and the ESMT commenced its operations in December 2012.

Gordon Unbound: The Heresthetic of Central Bank Independence in Britain

This article combines theory and narrative to shed new light on the politics surrounding the making of central bank independence in contemporary Britain. Its central argument is that Gordon Brown's rewriting of the British monetary constitution in May 1997 constituted political manipulation in a Rikerian sense. The government removed a contentious issue from party politics in order to signal competence and enforce internal discipline. Building on Elster's constraint theory, the paper argues that Brown adopted a pre-commitment strategy aimed at binding others. The heresthetic move had dual consequences, both constraining and enabling. The institutionalization of discipline enabled New Labour to achieve economic and political goals. By revisiting the political rationality of precommitment, this article questions the dominant credibility story underlying the choice of economic institutions.

Do we need a distinct monetary constitution?

Elements of the Chicago and Virginia traditions of political economy have rejected both competitive money production and money's politicization via post-constitutional bargaining, opting instead for constitutionalization. This paper argues that competitive money production is not subject to the pro-cyclicality that concerns constitutional political economy. It also meets the standard of predictability that motivates constitutional perspectives, although at the level of individual prices rather than the price level. An effective monetary constitution is implicit in any constitution that protects rights to property, contract, and exchange and sets limits on the democratic process.

Do We Need a Distinct Monetary Constitution?

The Chicago-Virginia tradition of political economy has rejected both competitive money production and money’s politicization via post-constitutional bargaining, opting instead for constitutionalization. This paper provides a constitutional political economy of the costs of inflation and argues that competitive money production is not subject to the pro-cyclicality that concerns constitutional political economy. It also meets the standard of predictability that motivates constitutional perspectives, although at the level of individual prices rather than the price level. An effective monetary constitution is implicit in any constitution that protects rights to property, contract, and exchange and sets limits on the democratic process.

La Banque du Canada était-elle nécessaire?

Traditional historiography has inferred that the Canadian government has failed to exercise control over the issue of high powered money during the interwar gold standard period. From this, it was concluded that the Canadian monetary constitution required modifications through the establishment of a central bank. This paper provides new evidence that the Canadian government did exercise monetary control during the period of the interwar gold standard regime and that Canada's record of adherence to the gold standard rules compares favourably with the performance of several other countries.

Buchanan on monetary constitutions

Buchanan’s reflections on monetary issues have been mostly neglected, despite their great interest both per se and for a deeper understanding of his general constitutional endeavour. We will thus propose a comprehensive assessment of Buchanan’s writings on this topic, focusing in particular on the different political models that have been developed to argue in favour of constitutional constraints on the governmental power to create money and on the implications that one can draw from our author’s monetary papers for the structure and the objectives of his constitutional discourse more generally.

The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, 1200-1500. Reinhold C. Mueller

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsThe Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, 1200-1500. Reinhold C. Mueller John E. DotsonJohn E. Dotson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 77, Number 1Jan., 2002 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2903851 Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 2002 The Medieval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Rania Adel Al-Bawwab The zecca mint: a self-enforcing monetary constitution in historic venice, Economics of Governance 23, no.11 (Aug 2021): 1–15.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-021-00260-zRania Al-Bawwab Zakat: A Case Study of Constraining Free Riding in Charity, SSRN Electronic Journal 7 (Jan 2021).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3896670Rania Al-Bawwab The Zecca Mint: A Self-Enforcing Monetary Constitution in Historic Venice, SSRN Electronic Journal 7 (Jan 2021).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3840232

Monetary Constitution, Political-Economic Regime, and Long-Term Inflation

Empiricaldata about inflation in different countries for about two hundredyears since 1800 demonstrate the importance of monetary regimesor constitutions as to the long-term inflationary bias of therespective currencies. Regimes binding the hands of governmentare less inflation-prone than others. This empirical fact isa consequence of political competition inducing governments tofavor inflationary monetary policies.

Monetary and Fiscal Constitutions and the Bureaucratic Behavior of the Federal Reserve

A body of literature has developed that models the Federal Reserve as a self- interested bureaucracy, and not simply as an altruistic bureau guided only by a concern with the public interest. This literature focuses on the monetary constitution—the institutional arrangements and relationships under which the Federal Reserve operates. However, the Federal Reserve also operates under a fiscal constitution (the institutional arrangements that guide development of a federal budget). This is because the Federal Reserve is an agent of Congress. Unfortunately, this important principal-agent relationship has not been incorpo rated into the examinations of the bureaucratic behavior of the Federal Reserve. The purpose of this article is to reexamine the Federal Reserve's tendency to engage in expense-preference behavior while controlling for both monetary and fiscal constitutions.

All politics is local: The effect of fiscal and monetary constitutions on economic policy

The rules of behavior for the monetary authorities changed in 1933 and 1947 and the Fed temporarily changed its operating procedures in 1979, but these changes did not alter the fact that the monetary authorities serve as the agent of the fiscal authorities. On the fiscal side, a shift from a centralized process to one where Congress was composed of a set of individual entrepreneurs altered the fiscal focus from the national economy to one of localized interests. This change led to a more autoregressive and deficit-prone federal budget and changed the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy. It also elevated the status of monetary policy to the extent where financial markets react to every utterance from the monetary authorities.

White’s free banking

1962, when Leland B. Yeager published his much praised collection of essays entitled "In Search of a Monetary Constitution," the concept of free banking obviously had not been considered important enough to deserve any special attention. In the meantime, however, the situation has completely changed. For more than two decades, we have experienced a steadily growing flow of books and articles dealing with the theory and the experience of unregulated banking, to the effect that except for a handful of specialists it has become extremely difficult to obtain a clear picture of the actual state of the discussion. The three volumes of White's anthology, therefore, should be regarded as a highly welcome and extremely valuable help for all those who are looking for a reliable and easily accessible source of information.

A Monetary Constitution Case for an Independent European Central Bank

A Monetary Constitution Case for an Independent European Central Bank

Historical considerations, property rights, and budgets: A comment on the use of inputs by the Federal Reserve

When considered in an alternative historical setting with a property right perspective, the extended public choice model found in AMCD offers strong confirmation for the S-T view of monetary authority behavior. In this light, a next step is to find an econometric specification that accounts for changing bureaucratic incentives within changing monetary regimes or constitutions. A rational expectations model of a bureaucratic Fed is beyond the scope of this comment. However, if a public choice approach to Fed behavior is to be useful, it must differentiate between variables, or the effects of variables, in a bureaucratic model relative to a model based on public service. For example, it is unclear how a significant debt variable in a static model of the monetary base supports or confirms a public choice view of the Fed. It is also possible that a public service oriented monetary authority could be motivated by national debt considerations. At least for now, Board employment appears to be a better public choice candidate. It is controllable by the central bankers and would be unimportant if the Fed was only interested in the public welfare.

Inflation and Monetary Constitutions in Historical Perspective

‘[The] power [to alter the quantity of money] should neither be entrusted to the state itself, nor to anybody in it; as there can be no security for the uniformity in the value of currency, when its augmentation or diminuation depends solely on the will of the issuers.’ David Ricardo [1816; in 1962, vol. 4, p. 691

Il futuro regime dei tassi di cambio.

When the Committee of Twenty decided to rename the exchange-rate regime rather than reform it, some two weeks after the system had collapsed, it immediately became clear that the ambitious attempt to write a new monetary constitution for the world had failed. If future attempts to reform world monetary relations are not to be equally doomed to failure, a primary requirement is a more realistic approach to this central issue. Accordingly, this paper is devoted to a consideration of the type of approach that wold be required. The author considers what solutions are feasible, managed floating versus crawling par values, the reference rate proposal and reference rates as the basis for a reformed system. JEL: E42, F33

Reorganization of the Venetian Coinage by Doge Enrico Dandolo

Previous articleNext article No AccessReorganization of the Venetian Coinage by Doge Enrico DandoloLouise Buenger RobbertLouise Buenger Robbert Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 49, Number 1Jan., 1974 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2856551 Views: 7Total views on this site Citations: 7Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1974 The Mediaeval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Rania Adel Al-Bawwab The zecca mint: a self-enforcing monetary constitution in historic venice, Economics of Governance 23, no.11 (Aug 2021): 1–15.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-021-00260-zRania Al-Bawwab Zakat: A Case Study of Constraining Free Riding in Charity, SSRN Electronic Journal 7 (Jan 2021).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3896670Rania Al-Bawwab The Zecca Mint: A Self-Enforcing Monetary Constitution in Historic Venice, SSRN Electronic Journal 7 (Jan 2021).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3840232Daniel J. Smith, Rania A. Al-Bawwab Constraining Elites: The Self-Enforcing Constitution of the Patricians of Venice, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2017).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2851157I. Calliari, C. Canovaro, M. Asolati, A. Saccocci, F. Grazzi, A. Scherillo Orio Malipiero’s and Enrico Dandolo’s denarii: surface and bulk characterization, Applied Physics A 113, no.44 (May 2013): 1081–1087.https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-013-7751-y Thomas F. Madden The Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade: Memory and the Conquest of Constantinople in Medieval Venice, Speculum 87, no.22 (Sep 2015): 311–344.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0038713412001017 David Buckton , and John Osborne The Enamel of Doge Ordelaffo Falier on the Pala d'Oro in Venice, Gesta 39, no.11 (Oct 2015): 43–49.https://doi.org/10.2307/767152

The Monetary Theory and Policy of Henry Simons

The Monetary Theory and Policy of Henry Simons

In Search of a Monetary Constitution.

In Search of a Monetary Constitution.

Toward a Monetary Constitution.

Toward a Monetary Constitution.

In Search of a Monetary Constitution. Leland B. Yeager

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsIn Search of a Monetary Constitution. Leland B. Yeager Karl BrunnerKarl Brunner Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Volume 71, Number 6Dec., 1963 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/258843 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1963 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.