arbiter
JournalsPricingAccount

The Great Debasement and English overseas trade: Gresham and Johnson in context

Ling‐Fan Li

The Economic History Review: a journal of economic and social history2026https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70099article
AJG 4ABDC A*
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

On the basis of price data collected from Gresham's Daybook and Johnson's letters, this article re‐examines a conventional argument in the literature: that currency depreciation during the Great Debasement made English cloth cheaper and thus stimulated an export boom. The price data reveal that the purchase prices of English wool and cloth rose at roughly same rate as the depreciation of pound sterling. The two effects of coinage debasement – inflation and currency depreciation – largely offset each other. Depreciation alone is insufficient to explain the sustained expansion of English exports, rather, strong foreign demand was likely to provide the underlying momentum for the English cloth boom.

Open paper page →

Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70099

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{ling‐fan2026,
  title        = {{The Great Debasement and English overseas trade: Gresham and Johnson in context}},
  author       = {Ling‐Fan Li},
  journal      = {The Economic History Review: a journal of economic and social history},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70099},
}

Paste directly into BibTeX, Zotero, or your reference manager.

Flag this paper

The Great Debasement and English overseas trade: Gresham and Johnson in context

Flags are reviewed by the Arbiter methodology team within 5 business days.

Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.