TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bordo,Michael D.
AU  - Kydland,Finn E.
TI  - The Gold Standard as a Rule
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3367
PY  - 1996
Y2  - January 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3367
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3367.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael D. Bordo
Department of Economics
Rutgers University
New Jersey Hall
75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Tel: 732/822-7152
Fax: 732/932-7416
E-Mail: bordo@econ.rutgers.edu

Finn Kydland
Department of Economics
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9210
Tel: 805/893-5464
Fax: 805/893-8830
E-Mail: kydland@econ.ucsb.edu
AB  - In this paper, we show that the monetary rule followed by a number of key countries, especially England and to a lesser extent the U. S., before 1914 represented a commitment technology preventing the monetary authorities from changing planned future policy. The experiences of these major countries suggest that the gold standard was intended as a contingent rule. By that, we mean, that the authorities could temporarily abandon the fixed price of gold during a wartime emergency on the understanding that convertibility at the original price of gold would be restored when the emergency passed. The experiences of other countries, however, suggest that the gold standard rule was often viewed more as a desirable goal than an operational constraint.
ER  -