IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/scandj/v122y2020i3p911-936.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Empirical Assessment of the Swedish Bullionist Controversy

Author

Listed:
  • Nils Herger

Abstract

In the 18th century, a fierce political debate broke out in Sweden about the causes of an extraordinary depreciation of the currency. More specifically, the deteriorating value of the Swedish currency was blamed arbitrarily on monetary causes (e.g., the overissuing of banknotes) and on non‐monetary causes (such as balance‐of‐payments deficits). This paper provides a comprehensive empirical assessment of this so‐called “Swedish Bullionist Controversy”. The results of vector autoregressions suggest that increasing amounts of paper money did give rise to inflation and a depreciation of the exchange rate. Conversely, non‐monetary factors were probably less important for these developments.

Suggested Citation

  • Nils Herger, 2020. "An Empirical Assessment of the Swedish Bullionist Controversy," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 122(3), pages 911-936, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scandj:v:122:y:2020:i:3:p:911-936
    DOI: 10.1111/sjoe.12337
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/sjoe.12337
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/sjoe.12337?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert V. Eagly, 1963. "Money, Employment and Prices: A Swedish View, 1761," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 77(4), pages 626-636.
    2. Òscar Jordà, 2005. "Estimation and Inference of Impulse Responses by Local Projections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 161-182, March.
    3. Peter Bernholz, 2003. "Monetary Regimes and Inflation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2873.
    4. Hendrickson, Joshua R., 2020. "The Riksbank, emergency finance, policy experimentation, and Sweden’s reversal of fortune," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 312-332.
    5. Geweke, John, 1984. "Inference and causality in economic time series models," Handbook of Econometrics, in: Z. Griliches† & M. D. Intriligator (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 19, pages 1101-1144, Elsevier.
    6. Fregert, Klas & Gustafsson, Roger, 2005. "Fiscal statistics for Sweden 1719-2003," Working Papers 2005:40, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    7. Nachane, D M & Hatekar, N R, 1995. "The Bullionist Controversy: An Empirical Reappraisal," The Manchester School of Economic & Social Studies, University of Manchester, vol. 63(4), pages 412-425, December.
    8. Edvinsson, Rodney, 2009. "Foreign exchange rates in Sweden 1658-1803," Stockholm Papers in Economic History 8, Stockholm University, Department of Economic History.
    9. Joshua R. Hendrickson, 2018. "The Bullionist Controversy: Theory and New Evidence," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(1), pages 203-241, February.
    10. Olsson, Mats & Svensson, Patrick, 2017. "Estimating agricultural production in Scania, 1702–1881 : User guide for the Historical Database of Scanian Agriculture and overall results," Lund Papers in Economic History 151, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    11. James Tobin, 1970. "Money and Income: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(2), pages 301-317.
    12. Edvinsson, Rodney, 2012. "The international political economy of early modern copper mercantilism: Rent seeking and copper money in Sweden 1624–1776," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 303-315.
    13. Rodney Edvinsson, 2012. "Early modern copper money: multiple currencies and trimetallism in Sweden 1624-1776," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 16(4), pages 408-429, November.
    14. repec:bla:scandj:v:78:y:1976:i:2:p:169-96 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Edvinsson, Rodney, 2009. "Swedish monetary standards in historical perspective," Stockholm Papers in Economic History 6, Stockholm University, Department of Economic History.
    16. Klas Fregert & Roger Gustafsson, 2007. "Fiscal statistics for Sweden 1719–2003," Research in Economic History, in: Research in Economic History, pages 169-223, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nils Herger, 2017. "An empirical assessment of the Swedish Bullionist Controversy," Working Papers 17.01, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    2. Hendrickson, Joshua R., 2020. "The Riksbank, emergency finance, policy experimentation, and Sweden’s reversal of fortune," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 312-332.
    3. Mr. S. M. Ali Abbas & Laura Blattner & Mark De Broeck & Ms. Asmaa A ElGanainy & Malin Hu, 2014. "Sovereign Debt Composition in Advanced Economies: A Historical Perspective," IMF Working Papers 2014/162, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Molinder, Jakob, 2019. "Why Was Unemployment so Low in Postwar Sweden? An Analysis with New Unemployment Data by Manufacturing Industry, 1935-1948," Lund Papers in Economic History 201, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    5. Ohlsson, Henry, 2011. "The legacy of the Swedish gift and inheritance tax, 1884–2004," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 539-569, December.
    6. Carmen M. Reinhart & M. Belen Sbrancia1, 2015. "The liquidation of government debt," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 30(82), pages 291-333.
    7. Al-Sadoon, Majid M., 2019. "Testing subspace Granger causality," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 9(C), pages 42-61.
    8. William Roberds & Francois R. Velde, 2014. "Early Public Banks," Working Paper Series WP-2014-3, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    9. Carmen M. Reinhart, 2010. "This Time is Different Chartbook: Country Histories on Debt, Default, and Financial Crises," NBER Working Papers 15815, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Piotr Koryś & Maciej Tymiński, 2013. "Polish and Swedish Fiscal Policy in the Years 1772-1792. A Short-Run Analysis," Ekonomia journal, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, vol. 33.
    11. Fredrik N. G. Andersson, 2023. "The quest for economic stability: a study on Swedish stabilisation policies 1873–2019," Scandinavian Economic History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 71(2), pages 128-156, May.
    12. Manuchehr Irandoust, 2018. "Government spending and revenues in Sweden 1722–2011: evidence from hidden cointegration," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 543-557, August.
    13. Hülsewig, Oliver & Rottmann, Horst, 2023. "Unemployment in the euro area and unconventional monetary policy surprises," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    14. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi & Juan Passadore, 2017. "Are State- and Time-Dependent Models Really Different?," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 379-457.
    15. Bonciani, Dario, 2015. "Estimating the effects of uncertainty over the business cycle," MPRA Paper 65921, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Senni, Chiara Colesanti & von Jagow, Adrian, 2023. "Water risks for hydroelectricity generation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119256, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Ireland, Peter N., 2003. "Endogenous money or sticky prices?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(8), pages 1623-1648, November.
    18. Peter Bernholz, 2013. "Independent central banks as a component of the separation of powers," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 199-214, September.
    19. Edward P. Herbst & Benjamin K. Johannsen, 2020. "Bias in Local Projections," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2020-010r1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 04 Jan 2021.
    20. Manuel Funke & Moritz Schularick & Christoph Trebesch, 2023. "Populist Leaders and the Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(12), pages 3249-3288, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:scandj:v:122:y:2020:i:3:p:911-936. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-9442 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.