The World's First Global Safe Asset: British Public Debt, 1718-1913

This paper assesses whether the British public debt featured a convenience yield during the Classical Gold Standard (1718-1913), as the US does in modern times. Our em- pirical results support this thesis. Increases in the British debt-to-GDP ratio decrease British public debt’s convenience yield between 8 and 20 basis points, qualitatively sim- ilar to the behavior of US public debt yields post-1926. Interestingly, the relationship between US yields and US public debt during the Classical Gold Standard counters previous findings for modern US times. International public debt yield spreads between other Gold Standard core countries and Britain were consistently positive and averaged 55 basis points, even though currency and sovereign risk were negligible at that time for the countries chosen.