New Evidence on the Resource Costs of Irredeemable Paper Money

This paper compares estimates of the resource costs of monetary gold accumulation under the classical (1880-1914) gold standard with estimates of the resource costs associated with gold “investment” in the post-Bretton Woods era (1972-present) for the United States. While the costs associated with monetary or “investment” uses of precious metals — primarily gold coins and bullion — fell to historically low levels during the “great moderation”...