Monedas de antiguo y nuevo cuño: Envilecimiento y reacuñación en el Nuevo Reino de Granada en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII

Abstract

The second half of the eighteenth century was a period of major transformations in the colonial economies.The monetary system was not an exception. This paper contributes to the analysis of such variations, examining two aspects of the monetary policy of the Bourbons: the debasement and the recoinage. For this, the currency amounts that agents took to the Nueva Granada mints to be reminted were reconstructed and the incentives that the Crown provided for that operation were analyzed. The results show that both measures altered the composition but not the size of the money supply. Thus, although the new coinage reduced transaction costs, the debasement prevented the currency in circulation to get unified. It was also found that the circulation of silver coins was important despite of the fact that the viceroyalty was a gold-producing economy. Finally, it is argued that both measures affected in different ways the behavior of variables such as inflation, low-denomination coins and the Gresham's law.