Lady Pecunia at the Puching Office: Two Poems on Early Modern Monetary Reform

Two early modern poems to support the argument that "habits of the lip" about commercial and economic matters were changing rapidly in the early modern period. Through their poetic consideration of contemporary debates about recoinage and debasement, the poems demonstrate a remarkable degree of economic understanding-among both author and audience-of issues such as commodity money, inflation, debasement, and Gresham's Law in both high culture and popular culture. The sophistication of that understanding is an important reminder that the economic way of thinking did not begin with Adam Smith, nor was it the sole purview of the elite ruling class. 

Find article at The Journal of Private Enterprise.