American Economic Review Vol. 76 No. 5 1986
Nominal Contracts in a Bimetallic Standard
Abstract
A bimetallic standard grants nominal debtors an option to deliver either of two metals. Construction of theoretical bimetallic option values allows the computation of the option value implicit in nineteenth-century U.S. securities. Appropriate yield adjustments permit a comparison of U.S. and monometallic European security yields. Yields on antebellum U.S. securities are close to British yields. Evaluating the option also allows the estimation of wealth transfers from shifts in the monetary standards during the nineteenth-century silver agitation.
- Volume
- 76
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1012-1030
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib