Costs of Financing U.S. Federal Debt Under a Gold Standard: 1791-1933

This paper constructs a new dataset of US federal bond prices and uses it to estimate the full term structure of yields on gold-denominated US federal debt from 1791 to 1933 — the entire gold standard era. The core research question is how the costs of financing US federal debt evolved over this period and what monetary, fiscal, and financial policy changes drove that evolution, with the ultimate aim of understanding how the US built fiscal capacity and transformed its debt from a “junk bond” into a global “safe asset.”

George Hall | Macro Paper Warehouse

Costs of Financing U.S. Federal Debt Under a Gold Standard: 1791-1933