IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedrer/y1987ijulp3-16nv.73no.4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Henry Thornton: seminal monetary theorist and father of the modern central bank

Author

Listed:
  • Robert L. Hetzel

Abstract

Henry Thorntons Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802) established once and for all the notion that central banks have the prime responsibility for controlling the money stock and the price level. This theme and the analytical framework underlying it reappeared in the famous Bullion Report (1810). There he and his coauthors contended that the central banks responsibility should be made explicit and that the mechanics for ensuring price level stability should be a matter of rules, not discretion.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert L. Hetzel, 1987. "Henry Thornton: seminal monetary theorist and father of the modern central bank," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 73(Jul), pages 3-16.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedrer:y:1987:i:jul:p:3-16:n:v.73no.4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/economic-quarterly-federal-reserve-bank-richmond-960/july-august-1987-477343
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McCallum, Bennett T., 1986. "Some issues concerning interest rate pegging, price level determinacy, and the real bills doctrine," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 135-160, January.
    2. Perlman, Morris, 1986. "The Bullionist Controversy Revisited," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 745-762, August.
    3. Sargent, Thomas J & Wallace, Neil, 1982. "The Real-Bills Doctrine versus the Quantity Theory: A Reconsideration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(6), pages 1212-1236, December.
    4. Thomas M. Humphrey, 1981. "Adam Smith and the monetary approach to the balance of payments," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 67(Nov), pages 3-10.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hume, Michael & Sentance, Andrew, 2009. "The global credit boom: Challenges for macroeconomics and policy," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(8), pages 1426-1461, December.
    2. Robert L. Hetzel, 2008. "What is the monetary standard, or, how did the Volcker-Greenspan FOMCs tame inflation?," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 94(Spr), pages 147-171.
    3. Richard S. Grossman & Hugh Rockoff, 2015. "Fighting the Last War: economists on the lender of last resort," Departmental Working Papers 201515, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    4. Robert L. Hetzel, 2016. "The Rise and Fall of the Quantity Theory in Nineteenth Century Britain: Implications for Early Fed Thinking," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Q4, pages 281-320.
    5. Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, 2024. "Ricardo’s Theory of Money Matters," Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought, in: Economic Theories, Protagonists and Facts, chapter 0, pages 81-101, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Brodbeck, Karl-Heinz, 2015. "Goethe und das Papiergeld," Working Paper Serie des Instituts für Ökonomie Ök-14, Hochschule für Gesellschaftsgestaltung (HfGG), Institut für Ökonomie.
    7. Christian A. Conrad, 2024. "Rules or Forward Guidance versus Discretion in Monetary Policy, Evidence from two Behavioral Experiments," Applied Economics and Finance, Redfame publishing, vol. 11(4), pages 38-49, November.
    8. Arie Arnon, 2007. "The Early Round Of The Bullionist Debate 1800-1802: Boyd, Baring And Thornton’S Innovative Ideas," Working Papers 0714, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andreas Schabert, 2003. "On the Relevance of Open Market Operations," Working Paper Series in Economics 4, University of Cologne, Department of Economics.
    2. Ramon Moreno, 1986. "Monetary control without a central bank: the case of Hong Kong," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Spr, pages 17-37.
    3. McCallum, Bennett T., 1999. "Issues in the design of monetary policy rules," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 23, pages 1483-1530, Elsevier.
    4. Woodford, Michael, 1995. "Price-level determinacy without control of a monetary aggregate," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 1-46, December.
    5. Rodney D. Peterson & Ronnie J. Phillips, 1991. "In Memoriam," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 35(1), pages 79-81, March.
    6. Liu, Zheng, 2000. "Seasonal cycles, business cycles, and monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 441-464, October.
    7. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/2961 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Edward Nelson, 2020. "Seven Fallacies Concerning Milton Friedman's “The Role of Monetary Policy”," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(1), pages 145-164, February.
    9. McCallum, Bennett T., 2001. "Indeterminacy, bubbles, and the fiscal theory of price level determination," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 19-30, February.
    10. Benjamin Eden, 2009. "The Role of Government in the Credit Market," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0907, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    11. Berentsen, Aleksander & Monnet, Cyril, 2008. "Monetary policy in a channel system," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(6), pages 1067-1080, September.
    12. Ricardo de O. Cavalcanti & Andres Erosa & Ted Temzelides, 1999. "Private Money and Reserve Management in a Random-Matching Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(5), pages 929-945, October.
    13. Frederick T. Furlong & Michael C. Keeley, 1986. "Bank regulation and the public interest," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Spr, pages 55-71.
    14. Sargent, Thomas J, 1982. "Beyond Demand and Supply Curves in Macroeconomics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(2), pages 382-389, May.
    15. Pamfili Antipa & Christophe Chamley, 2017. "Monetary and Fiscal Policy in England during the French Wars (1793-1821)," Working papers 627, Banque de France.
    16. Peter N. Ireland, 2005. "The Liquidity Trap, The Real Balance Effect, And The Friedman Rule ," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1271-1301, November.
    17. Roell, Ailsa & Sussman, Oren, 1997. "Stabilization," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 279-293, February.
    18. Roberto Tamborini, 2010. "The Macroeconomics of Imperfect Capital Markets: Whither Saving-Investment Imbalances?," Contributions to Economics, in: Giorgio Calcagnini & Enrico Saltari (ed.), The Economics of Imperfect Markets, chapter 0, pages 137-166, Springer.
    19. Neil Wallace, 1990. "A suggestion for oversimplifying the theory of money," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 14(Win), pages 19-26.
    20. Rao Aiyagari, S. & Wallace, Neil & Wright, Randall, 1996. "Coexistence of money and interest-bearing securities," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 397-419, June.
    21. Joseph E. Gagnon & Dale W. Henderson, 1990. "Nominal interest rate pegging under alternative expectations hypotheses," Proceedings, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), pages 438-473.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedrer:y:1987:i:jul:p:3-16:n:v.73no.4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christian Pascasio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbrius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.