TY - JOUR AU - Grubb,Farley TI - The Continental Dollar: How Much Was Really Issued? JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 13047 PY - 2007 Y2 - April 2007 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13047 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13047.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Farley Grubb University of Delaware Economics Department Newark, DE 19716 Tel: 302/831-1905 Fax: 302/831-6968 E-Mail: grubbf@udel.edu AB - The U.S. Congress issued paper money called Continental Dollars to finance the American Revolution. The story of the Continental Dollar is familiar to all -- a lot were issued and hyper-inflation ensued. However, the details of this story are less well known. Scholars even disagree over how much was issued -- disagree by over 50 percent. Meaningful monetary analysis of the Continental Dollar cannot proceed given this confusion in the data. Evidence is gathered here to reconcile past estimates and establish the exact amount and time path of Continental Dollars emitted thereby overcoming the entropy that has crept into the historical record. ER -