In the course of his long and distinguished career at the Ashmolean Museum and the University of Oxford, Nicholas Mayhew has established a reputation as one of the foremost authorities on medieval monetary history and numismatics. His numerous publications span a wide variety of topics and time periods, and include both specialist academic studies and works written for a more popular audience, such as his history of the British pound sterling, published by Penguin (Mayhew Reference Mayhew1999). In particular, he is perhaps most celebrated for his pioneering work in the application of modern economic theory to historical data. It is therefore fitting that this essay collection honouring his work is published in the series Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance, which emphasises both the equal contribution of historians, economists and finance specialists to the analysis of past economies, and the relevance of this topic to the present day.

Mayhew’s wide-ranging interests are reflected in the ambitious scope of this volume, which contains thirteen essays on subjects ranging from the Domesday Book to twentieth-century UK monetary policy, although the majority of contributions deal with the medieval period. The authors come from a variety of academic backgrounds, and consequently use a number of different methodological approaches drawn from the disciplines of history, economics, finance and numismatics. The various methodologies adopted by the contributors in part account for the varying scope of the essays, which include large-scale archaeological surveys and applications of economic theory as well as more detailed regional and archival studies. The inter-disciplinary nature of the collection means that, for most readers, some elements will be difficult to follow; many historians, for example, may have difficulty in understanding the full implications of the economic models. However, several of the essays serve as a useful illustration of the benefits of using economic theory in historical analysis.

In their introduction to the volume, the editors begin by asserting that ‘Nick Mayhew’s most important contribution to monetary history has been to apply the Fisher Equation to the medieval economy to further the debate about the roles of population and monetary growth in driving prices and wages’ (p 1). (For those readers less familiar with the theoretical background, it is worth mentioning a potential confusion over terminology here. The Fisher Equation is also known as the Quantity Theory of Money; the latter term is used elsewhere in the volume and by Mayhew himself in his lectures on the subject given to the Royal Numismatic Society between 2010 and 2013 (and which were subsequently published in the Numismatic Chronicle: Mayhew Reference Mayhew2010, Reference Mayhew2011, Reference Mayhew2012 and Reference Mayhew2013). Quantity Theory, in a nutshell, suggests that in an economy there is a causal relationship between the money supply and its circulation on the one hand, and prices and output (usually measured by GDP) on the other; so, for example, if there is an increase in the supply of currency, prices will rise. This theory underpins the emphasis in Mayhew’s work on the centrality of the money supply (its quantity, quality and distribution) to the medieval economy, and many of these essays are concerned with this idea and its implications. Martin Allen examines extensive new data on single coin finds from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, suggesting a reinterpretation of the period following the Black Death as one of heightened monetary activity. Chapters by Phillipp Schofield, Pamela Nightingale and Chris Briggs reconsider the role of credit in the medieval economy, its relationship to the money supply, and the importance of regional variation in the way these interacted. Drawing on a range of literary and documentary material, James Davis places these developments in their social and cultural context by examining the moral values that governed the use of money and credit in the medieval period. The final chapters of the volume turn to later time periods, but display a strong thematic link with earlier contributions. The contemporary relevance of the issues discussed within the volume is underlined by Nicholas Dimsdale’s use of Quantity Theory to examine monetary trends in the UK since 1870, in which he concludes that the expansion in credit since the 1980s was one of the driving forces behind the financial crisis of 2007–8.

One of the key themes to emerge from this collection concerns historical methodology. Several of the contributors discuss the inherent difficulties in attempting to establish meaningful relationships between historical variables within complex economic systems, and the potential for models derived from economic theory to provide a solution to this problem. In particular, Mark and Catherine Casson address this issue, suggesting that econometric analysis can be a useful tool in determining the difference between correlation and causation in historical data. While not every historian might wish to apply these methods, publications such as this are to be applauded for drawing attention to the possibilities they open up.