TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hall,Robert E.
TI  - Controlling the Price Level
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6914
PY  - 1999
Y2  - January 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6914
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6914.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Robert E. Hall
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305-6010
Tel: 650/723-2215
E-Mail: rehall@gmail.com
AB  - Governments determine the size of the unit of value just as they determine the length of the length and weight of physical units of measure. What are the different ways that a government can control the size of the unit of value, that is, control the price level? In general, the government designates a resource gold, paper currency, another country's currency and defines its unit of value as a particular amount of that resource. An interesting variant proposed by Irving Fisher in 1913 and implemented more recently in Chile is to alter the resource content of the unit to stabilize the price level. Another idea is to alter the interest rate paid on reserves in a way that stabilizes the price level.
ER  -