The Phase Structure of Metallic Money: An MPTT Framework for the Spanish Price Revolution (opens in new tab)

The Spanish Price Revolution is usually treated as a classic case in which American bullion inflows expanded the money supply and generated inflation. This view captures the first phase of the episode but fails to explain why the same monetary expansion did not continue to produce proportional price growth after 1600. We develop a two-phase Money Phase Transition Theory (MPTT) model in which the classical monetary relation is recovered before a ...