Paper Money but a Gold Debt. Italy in the Gold Standard

During the 52 years between the Unification of the Kingdom of Italy and World War 1, the lira was legally convertible into metal for a limited period of time. Although not formally committed to gold, the lira exchange towards the gold standard countries proved remarkably stable, \223shadowing\224 gold. It is widely claimed that being one of the successful members of the gold standard circle entailed a number of advantages. If the lira was closely linked to gold, suggesting that there was only a small cost connected to adopting the gold standard, then why did Italy not make all possible efforts to resume as soon as possible and adhere more strictly to the gold standard? Italy had a large foreign debt that was basically the result of Unification. This debt was denominated in lira, but foreign holders could convert their coupons into gold at the official rate in Paris. Italy could exploit its domestic bondholders by allowing the lira to depreciate, while insisting that domestic holders of the debt accept lira. But there were limits to this process because Italians could take the coupons to Paris have them paid in gold and because payments abroad, in gold, became more expensive following depreciation. The paper explores the various measures the Italian government used to prevent arbitrage, and the strategies bondholders used to circumvent them. In the end, however, it was clear that if devaluation went too far, most of the coupons would be presented in Paris, the debt would de facto became a gold debt, and the Italian Treasury would suffer a substantial loss of gold. Hence the convenience of letting the lira float downward and exploit seignorage any time domestic conditions became more critical. At the same time it was necessary to keep depreciation within a certain range, \223shadowing\224 the lira par value.economic history gold standard convertibility debt

Unintended Consequences and Intended Non-Consequences

The idea that government policies have unintended consequences has become a fixture of political argument, indeed a cliché. One can hardly get through a day’s newspaper editorials without encountering it with respect to something in the news—the TARP bailouts, the North Korea bailouts, executive pay caps, local issues such as the drinking age and the driving age.

Preempting Unintended Consequences

Sommer offers some insights on preemption. The case for preemption is that there is an inherent logic and consistency in having litigation involving nationally traded securities resolved in a single forum

Truth and Consequences

International audienc

The Unintended Consequences of Flexicurity : The Health Consequences of Flexible Employment

Publisher PD

Extragalactic H3O+: Some Consequences

We discuss some implications of our recent detection of extragalactic H3O+: the location of the gas in M82, the origin of energetic radiation in M82, and the possible feedback effects of star formation on the cosmic ray flux in galaxies.Comment: Five pages, one figure; contribution to proceedings of conference "Far-infrared observations of the interstellar medium", December 2007, Bad Honne

Some Consequences of Categorification

Several conjectures on acyclic skew-symmetrizable cluster algebras are proven as direct consequences of their categorification via valued quivers. These include conjectures of Fomin-Zelevinsky, Reading-Speyer, and Reading-Stella related to $\mathbf{d}$-vectors, $\mathbf{g}$-vectors, and $F$-polynomials