IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1680.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Gibson's Paradox and the Gold Standard

Author

Listed:
  • Robert B. Barsky
  • Lawrence H. Summers

Abstract

This paper provides a new explanation for Gibson's Paradox -- the observation that the price level and the nominal interest rate were positively correlated over long periods of economic history. We explain this phenomenon interms of the fundamental workings of a gold standard. Under a gold standard, the price level is the reciprocal of the real price of gold. Because gold is adurable asset, its relative price is systematically affected by fluctuations inthe real productivity of capital, which also determine real interest rates. Our resolution of the Gibson Paradox seems more satisfactory than previous hypotheses. It explains why the paradox applied to real as well as nominal rates of return, its coincidence with the gold standard period, and the co-movement of interest rates, prices, and the stock of monetary gold during the gold standard period. Empirical evidence using contemporary data on gold prices and real interest rates supports our theory.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert B. Barsky & Lawrence H. Summers, 1985. "Gibson's Paradox and the Gold Standard," NBER Working Papers 1680, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1680
    Note: EFG ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1680.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sargent, Thomas J, 1973. "Interest Rates and Prices in the Long Run: A Study of the Gibson Paradox," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 5(1), pages 385-449, Part II F.
    2. Barro, Robert J, 1979. "Money and the Price Level under the Gold Standard," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 89(353), pages 13-33, March.
    3. David Levhari & Robert S. Pindyck, 1981. "The Pricing of Durable Exhaustible Resources," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 96(3), pages 365-377.
    4. Michael D. Bordo, 1981. "The classical gold standard: some lessons for today," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 63(May), pages 2-17.
    5. Barsky, Robert B., 1987. "The Fisher hypothesis and the forecastability and persistence of inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 3-24, January.
    6. Frederick R. Macaulay, 1938. "Some Theoretical Problems Suggested by the Movements of Interest Rates, Bond Yields and Stock Prices in the United States since 1856," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number maca38-1.
    7. Granger, C. W. J. & Newbold, P., 1974. "Spurious regressions in econometrics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 111-120, July.
    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. Cucciniello, Maria Chiara & Deleidi, Matteo & Levrero, Enrico Sergio, 2022. "The cost channel of monetary policy: The case of the United States in the period 1959–2018," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 409-433.
    2. Ekaterini Panopoulou, 2005. "A Resolution of the Fisher Effect Puzzle: A Comparison of Estimators," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp067, IIIS.
    3. António Portugal Duarte & João Sousa Andrade, 2012. "How the Gold Standard functioned in Portugal: an analysis of some macroeconomic aspects," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(5), pages 617-629, February.
    4. N. Gregory Mankiw & Jeffrey A. Miron, 1986. "The Changing Behavior of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(2), pages 211-228.
    5. Binder, Carola Conces, 2016. "Estimation of historical inflation expectations," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1-31.
    6. Robert B. Barsky & J. Bradford De Long, 1988. "Forecasting Pre-World War I Inflation: The Fisher Effect Revisited," NBER Working Papers 2784, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Daniel Kaufmann, 2016. "Is Deflation Costly After All? Evidence from Noisy Historical Data," KOF Working papers 16-421, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    8. Michael D. Bordo & John Landon Lane & Angela Redish, 2004. "Good versus Bad Deflation: Lessons from the Gold Standard Era," NBER Working Papers 10329, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Stefan Gerlach & Rebecca Stuart, 2024. "International co-movements of inflation, 1851–1913," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 76(4), pages 997-1013.
    10. Luca Benati, 2005. "U.K. Monetary Regimes and Macroeconomic Stylised Facts," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 107, Society for Computational Economics.
    11. Garcés Díaz Daniel, 2020. "On the Drivers of Inflation in Different Monetary Regimes," Working Papers 2020-16, Banco de México.
    12. Dr Ferda Halicioglou, 2004. "The Gibson Paradox: An Empirical Investigation for Turkey," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(1-2), pages 111-120.
    13. Jens Weidmann, 1997. "New Hope for the Fisher Effect? A Re-Examination Using Threshold Cointegration," Macroeconomics 9705005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Sumner, Scott, 2020. "A Critique of Interest Rate–Oriented Monetary Economics," Working Papers 10698, George Mason University, Mercatus Center.
    15. Noor Ghazali & Soo-Wah Low, 2002. "The expectation hypothesis in emerging financial markets: the case of Malaysia," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(9), pages 1147-1156.
    16. Michael D. Bordo & Finn E. Kydland, 1990. "The Gold Standard as a Rule," NBER Working Papers 3367, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Michael D. Bordo & Joseph G. Haubrich, 2004. "The Yield Curve, Recessions and the Credibility of the Monetary Regime: Long Run Evidence 1875-1997," NBER Working Papers 10431, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Paul Evans & Xiaojun Wang, 2008. "A Tale of Two Effects," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(1), pages 147-157, February.
    19. Noor Ghazali & Shamshubariah Ramlee, 2003. "A long memory test of the long-run Fisher effect in the G7 countries," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(10), pages 763-769.
    20. Robert B. Barsky & J. Bradford De Long, 1991. "Forecasting Pre-World War I Inflation: The Fisher Effect and the Gold Standard," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(3), pages 815-836.

    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:nbr:nberwo:1680. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.