The Birth of the Continental Dollar, 1775
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE CONTINENTAL DOLLAR: INITIAL DESIGN, IDEAL PERFORMANCE, AND THE CREDIBILITY OF CONGRESSIONAL COMMITMENT Farley Grubb Working Paper 17276 http://www.nber.org/papers/w17276 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 August 2011 Preliminary versions were presented at Queens University, Kingston, Canada, 2010; University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, 2010; the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 2011; the annual meeting of the Economic History Association, Boston, MA, 2011; and the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 2011. The author thanks the participants for their comments. Research assistance by John Bockrath, Jiaxing Jiang, and Zachary Rose, and editorial assistance by Tracy McQueen, are gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer- reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2011 by Farley Grubb. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. The Continental Dollar: Initial Design, Ideal Performance, and the Credibility of Congressional Commitment Farley Grubb NBER Working Paper No. 17276 August 2011, Revised February 2013 JEL No. E42,E52,G12,G18,H11,H56,H6,H71,N11,N21,N41 ABSTRACT An alternative history of the Continental dollar is constructed from original sources and tested against evidence on prices and exchange rates.
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