Hymans:The Changing Color of Money The database built on the basis of the Standard Catalog data can be described as follows.For the current EU 15 plus East Germany,I collected information on all regular,mass-produced,central bank-issued banknotes (not Treasury Bills or other interest-bearing notes).I made a separate entry in the database for each banknote that has a separate catalog entry number in the Standard Catalog.+I recorded separately every human figure(named and unnamed)on the front or back of the notes.5 Then I located biographical information about any named individuals pictured on the banknotes,including their historical importance and date of birth.This work was greatly facilitated by a massive online biographical index (Inter- nationaler Biographischer Index,1999).Thanks to this and other sources,I currently lack identifying biographical information for only 15 images(14 different historical figures),mostly from Spain and Portugal from around the turn of the 20th century. The database covers 1368 separate banknotes from the 15 current EU member states plus East Germany.Of those 1368 separate banknotes,1174 depict human figures.On the 1174 banknotes with human figures,I counted 1424 such human figures.Of these,I was able to track down the biographical data for 1409 of them,and it is these 1409 images that serve as the key data set for my empirical analysis.The 194 banknotes without human figures mainly come from one of three sources-the period before 1920 when many central bank printing facilities were still in their infancy, the German hyperinflationary period of the 1920s and 1930s,or very small denominations. Table 2 breaks down these totals by country,noting also the start date of each banknote series in the data set.The far-right hand column is the key one;it represents the set of 1424 images that form the basic data set on which I perform my analysis.This includes many banknotes with only very slight differences between them.But it may surprise those expecting iconographic stickiness'to note that in most countries iconographic change has been more common than iconographic stasis.Overall,out of the 1424 images in the data set,846 or 59%depict a different person than the previous note at the same denomination.There is variation across countries on this score,but in the data set only Great Britain has had a strong tendency to issue new banknotes featuring the same human figures as before.Apart from Great Britain's 15%score on this measure,no other country scores lower than 34%,and only two,Ireland and Sweden,score lower than 40%.Thus it would appear that there is little if any inherent obstacle to iconographic change.Given this finding,even if the imagery does not change it is reasonable to assume that this stasis was the result of a conscious choice. 11 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission.Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission