An Empirical Assessment of the Swedish Bullionist Controversy*
实证评估18世纪瑞典关于货币贬值的“金块主义争议”，发现纸币过量发行导致通胀和汇率贬值，而非货币因素影响较小。
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.