Paper Pound, 1797-1821

by Edwin Cannan

First Published in 1970. This is the second edition reprint of the Bullion Report of 1810, published in 1925 with an introduction that outlines why it is a useful document as reference to the similarities of the consequences that the United Kingdom found itself in after 1919 in regards to the printing of the currency note and the Cunliffe limitation.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Edwin Cannan, the son of artist Jane Cannan, was a British economist and historian of economic thought. He was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1895 to 1926.

As a partisan of Jevonianism, Edwin Cannan is perhaps best known for his logical dissection and destruction of Classical theory in his famous 1898 tract History of the Theories of Production and Distribution. Although Cannan had personal and professional difficulties with Alfred Marshall, he was still "Marshall's man" at the LSE from 1895 to 1926. During that time, particularly during his long stretch as chairman after 1907, Edwin Cannan shepherded the LSE away from its roots in Fabian socialism into tentative Marshallianism. This period was only to last, however, until his protégé, Lionel Robbins, took over with his more "Continental" ideas.

Though Cannan, in his early years as an economist, was a critic of classical economics and an ally of interventionists, he moved sharply to the side of classical liberalism in the early 20th century. He favored a simplicity, clarity, and common sense in the exposition of economics. According to Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Cannan "emphasised the institutional foundation of economic systems"