Silver, not sterling: a comment on Mayhew's velocity
Monetary history is little loved and often finds few suitors, so it may perhaps seem churlish to call attention to a disagreement with a fellow practitioner. Mayhew graciously cited several of my articles on sixteenthcentury monetary matters in his recent article' in this journal. At the risk of appearing ungrateful, I am impelled to offer some clarification of my views and methods while not disagreeing directly with his results. He is quite correct in observing that, in comparing bullion supplies, bullion prices, the velocity of circulation of bullion, and the level of transactions during some years of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, I concluded that the V term (velocity in the Fisher equation MV = PT) had increased in the latter century and that in the absence of such an increase, bullion prices would have fallen rather than risen during the so-called price revolution. My precise words were as follows: