IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/90507.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bimetallism and its discontents: cooperation and coordination failure in the empire’s monetary politics, 1549–59

Author

Listed:
  • Volckart, Oliver

Abstract

The article uses new sources to review the hypotheses that Charles V's currency bill of 1551 failed because of the electoral-Saxon resistance against the undervaluation of the taler that it stipulated, or because the emperor was too weak to overcome the estates' resistance to collective action in monetary policies. The study shows that these issues were overshadowed by the dispute about whether a bimetallic currency should be established. Charles V's currency bill failed because the Diet of Augsburg (1550–51) asked the emperor to publish it before all open issues had been resolved. This request placed the emperor in a dilemma where he had to make a decision but could not do so without antagonising important parties. It was the result of a coordination failure at the level of the Empire, which in turn was a consequence of a lack of continuity among those personnel involved in shaping monetary policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Volckart, Oliver, 2018. "Bimetallism and its discontents: cooperation and coordination failure in the empire’s monetary politics, 1549–59," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 90507, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:90507
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/90507/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    monetary politics; currency unions; coinage; bimetallism; early modern history;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General
    • H10 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - General
    • H60 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - General
    • N10 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • N40 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - General, International, or Comparative

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ehl:lserod:90507. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    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.