MONEY SUPPLY AND GREEK HISTORICAL MONETARY STATISTICS: DEFINITION, CONSTRUCTION, SOURCES AND DATA
Sophia Lazaretou
Bank of Greece
ABSTRACT
This paper attempts to provide, for the first time, a survey of the construction of estimates of the quantity of money in Greece since the inception of the National Bank of Greece in 1842 until the eve of WWII. Specifically, we describe in detail the methods of construction and the sources of data used in building these aggregates. We discuss the data collection procedure and publication practices. The end product is presented in a data appendix.
JEL Classification: E51, N24
Keywords: money, monetary aggregates, data, sources.
Acknowledgements: An adapted version was presented at the XVth World Economic History Congress, session on Economic and Monetary History of 19-20 centuries’ SEE, Utrecht, 3-7 August, 2009. I would like to thank Claude Diebolt, Heather Gibson and session participants for their comments and suggestions, especially Alice Teichova, Michael Palairet and Sevket Pamuk. Earlier versions were presented in the 1st and the 4th Workshops of the Data Collection Task Force of the South Eastern European Monetary History Network (SEEMHN DCTF) held in Sofia (hosted by the BNB) and Vienna (hosted by the OeNB) in October 2006 and December 2008, respectively. I would like to express my thanks to all workshop participants and especially to Roumen Avramov, Kalina Dimitrova, Martin Ivanov, Peter Moosleschner and Matthias Morys for their fruitful discussions. I also wish to thank the historical archives of the National Bank of Greece and the library of the Bank of Greece; without their help, this paper would not have been possible. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of Greece. I alone am responsible for the remaining errors.
Correspondence:
Sophia Lazaretou
Bank of Greece, 21, El. Venizelou Ave.,
10250, Athens, Greece,
Tel. 0030 210 320 2992
e-mail: slazaretou@bankofgreece.gr