Abstract
The ‘real bills doctrine’ has its origin in banking developments of the 17th and 18th centuries. It received its first authoritative exposition in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, was then repudiated by Thornton and Ricardo in the famous Bullionist Controversy, and was finally rehabilitated as the ‘law of reflux’ by Tooke and Fullarton in the currency–banking debate of the mid-19th century. Even now, echoes of the real bills doctrine reverberate in modern monetary theory.
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Green, R. (2018). Real Bills Doctrine. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1614
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1614
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Keywords
- Banking School
- Bullionist controversy
- Cantillon, R.
- Convertibility
- Currency School
- Fractional reserve banking
- Fullarton, J.
- Land bank
- Law of circulation
- Law of reflux
- Law, J.
- Mercantilism
- Overissue
- Physiocracy
- Real bills doctrine
- Ricardo, D.
- Smith, A.
- Steuart
- Sir J.
- Thornton, H.
- Tooke, T