Abstract
The British colonies in North America experimented with legislature-issued paper monies to supplement their specie monies which were in chronic short supply. These experiments were designed to produce inside monies that, unlike specie monies, could not profitably be exported. The nature of British regulation, while leaving room for some variation, constrained the colonies to issuing fiat currencies that were typically tied to paying the future taxes and other dues levied by the issuing colonies. After some early failures, most of these experiments performed well over the quarter century before the Revolution as revealed by the presence of long-run price stability.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Brock, L.V. 1975. The currency of the American colonies, 1700–1764. New York: Arno.
Ernst, J.E. 1973. Money and politics in America, 1755–1775. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Grubb, F. 2003. Creating the U.S.-dollar currency union, 1748–1811: A quest for monetary stability or a usurpation of state sovereignty for personal gain? American Economic Review 93: 1778–1798.
Grubb, F. 2004. The circulating medium of exchange in colonial Pennsylvania, 1729–1775: New estimates of monetary composition, performance, and economic growth. Explorations in Economic History 41: 329–360.
Grubb, F. 2006. Benjamin Franklin and the birth of a paper money economy. Philadelphia: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Available at: http://www.philadelphiafed.org/education/index.html#publications. Accessed 8 Nov 2008
Grubb, F. 2008. Creating Maryland’s paper money economy, 1720–1739: The role of power, print, and markets. NBER working paper #13974. Available at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13974. Accessed 8 Nov 2008.
McCusker, J.J. 1978. Money and exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Mossman, P.L. 1992. Money of the American colonies and confederation: A numismatic, economic and historical correlation. New York: American Numismatic Society.
Newman, E.P. 1997. The early paper money of America, 4th ed. Iola: Krause.
Officer, L.H. 2005. The quantity theory in New England, 1703–1749: New data to analyze an old question. Explorations in Economic History 42: 101–121.
Rabushka, A. 2008. Taxation in colonial America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rousseau, P.L. 2006. A common currency: Early US monetary policy and the transition to the dollar. Financial History Review 13: 97–122.
Rousseau, P.L. 2007. Backing, the quantity theory, and the transition to the US dollar, 1723–1850. American Economic Review–Papers and Proceedings 97: 266–270.
Thayer, T. 1953. The land-bank system in the American colonies. Journal of Economic History 13: 145–159.
West, R.C. 1978. Money in the colonial American economy. Economic Inquiry 16: 1–15.
Wicker, E. 1985. Colonial monetary standards contrasted: Evidence from the Seven Years’ War. Journal of Economic History 45: 869–884.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Grubb, F. (2018). Money Supply in the American Colonies. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2657
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2657
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95188-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95189-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences