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Before the Revolution American colonies issued paper money known as ‘bills of credit’. The bills issued in the Middle colonies held their value surprisingly well despite large wartime fluctuations in the quantity issued, but those issued in New England depreciated as the quantity in circulation increased. The bills' stable purchasing power in the Middle colonies has often been attributed to the redemption provisions enacted when the bills were issued. Similar provisions in New England supposedly failed because New England failed to enforce them. This article explores the comparative enforcement of redemption provisions in the two regions, and in New York in particular, and concludes that differential enforcement does not explain the disparity between the New England experience and that in the Middle colonies.

In the Economic History Review, James Celia and Farley Grubb (2016) liken colonial Maryland's dollar-denominated bills of credit to discount securities, circulating at less than their face value. This note argues that the bills in question circulated at par with specie and were treated as interchangeable with specie dollars. Celia and Grubb arrive at their conclusion by misstating the par of exchange.

The effect of highway safety laws on highway fatalities in the US is examined through the use of a Poisson regression model. Many states changed their highway safety laws by raising the speed limit on rural interstates, raising the minimum drinking age to 21, and passing mandatory seat belt laws. While there is no statistically significant effect of the 65-mph speed limit on fatal accidents, the point estimate in the regression suggests that it increases fatal accidents. OLS regressions show that the higher speed limit is associated with an increase in interstate vehicle miles traveled of about 2.6%, and the increase is statistically significant. This implies an additional 2.6% increase in fatalities. Overall, it is interesting that the effects of these laws are so small and difficult to discern. The 65-mph speed limit on rural interstates has had little effect on fatal accidents, and the same is apparently true of the higher drinking ages. The most promising single piece of legislation for reducing highway fatalities may well be primary seat belt laws.

Economists who believe insider-trading laws are in the public interest have sought to explain how restrictions improve efficiency. Economists who believe that these laws serve only private interests have tried to identify the constituency for such laws. While insider-trading laws presumably protect small individual investors, Haddock and Macey (1987) argue that small investors lack the political organization to lobby for such laws. In the Haddock and Macey model, the Securities and Exchange Commission chooses the level of regulation and enforcement to maximize political support. By not modeling the financial-market consequences of barring insiders, however, many key questions remain unanswered. These questions are addressed by generalizing a model first introduced by Albert Kyle (1985), and performing some numerical analysis.

Producers of traded goods, driven by concern for their competitiveness in international and domestic markets, exert pressure for a low real exchange rate, while producers of nontraded goods and consumers prefer a high real exchange rate that maximizes the purchasing power of domestic consumers. The real exchange rate is not directly controlled by the government, but because adjustment to purchasing power parity is sluggish, the real exchange rate can be manipulated in the short run by government actions. Floating exchange rates have the benefit of allowing a country to pursue an independent monetary policy to mitigate macroeconomic shocks, a benefit that is likely to be offset in the calculations of those heavily involved in the international trade sector by considerations of foreign exchange rate risk, leading those involved in international commerce to favor fixed rates, and those engaged principally in domestic commerce to prefer floating rates. Presumably Frieden would counter...