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Alexander Harrowell's avatar

I suppose the point of swapping a chunk of bullion for coins was that coins are more liquid - you could settle a bill of any size for enough coins while trying to pay someone with a lump of bullion would be trouble. As such, the seignorage charge is something like a central bank overnight interest rate - the price of liquidity from the provider of last resort.

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Hamza's avatar

It was somewhat of an aside, but the statistic that jumped out at me was "At a time when bread and beer made up 75-85% of the typical person’s expenditure..." Is there some index/resource that lists what percentage of a person's income certain goods consume? I'm able to find indices for the twentieth century but I don't know where to look for data for the 19th century and earlier.

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