Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

Colonial New Jersey’s Paper Money, 1709–1775: Why Ronald Michener Insists on Using Uncorrected Data—A Reply

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Abstract

Ronald Michener (2019a) objects to my work on colonial New Jersey’s paper money. He objects to how I calculate the money’s asset present value, to how I calculate the money’s market exchange value, to how I correct exchange rate data, and to the econometric treatment I apply to that money’s performance. In short, he objects to everything I do regarding colonial paper money and to the fact that I was allowed to publish anything on that topic in the first place. I show that his objections are erroneous. He does not understand how I constructed the data nor how I modeled monetary performance. His econometric objections amount to applying the usual tricks to drive estimated coefficients toward statistical insignificance. Michener’s objection to my corrections to the exchange rate data rests on his disregard of economic and mathematical theory. For Michener, demand curves slope up and the rules of long division do not hold.