Zoom-Link: univienna.zoom.us/j/68503202024
This project (co-authored with Quoc-Anh Do) is concerned with politicians' conflicts of interest in a historical setting. In particular, we seek to understand whether personal financial gain motivated British Members of Parliament when they decided in 1819 to return to the gold standard after the French Wars (1793-1815).
We show the importance of politicians' personal financial motivations by analyzing the size and timing of their government debt holdings, as recorded in the archives of the Bank of England. In doing so, our analysis informs our understanding of how institutional structures generate credible commitment – in this case to stable money – and shows that allowing some amount of what we would today classify as corruption rendered the institution self-enforcing.
