Political Economy of Supplying Money to a Growing Economy: Monetary Regimes and the Search for an Anchor to Stabilize the Value of Money
-
Richard Sylla
Money performs its economic functions best when its value remains stable over time. This Article explores how that desideratum was achieved, or not achieved, under five identifiable monetary regimes in economic history. Transitions from one regime to another resulted from the demands of economic growth, which some regimes met better than others. The modern fiat money regime is optimal in most economic respects. Whatever amount of money needed to accommodate growth can be supplied at minimal costs. But political control over money creation can be used to increase the short-term control over economic resources of those in power and their constituents. When such debasements of money have occurred, the political economy of every regime interfered with achieving optimal long-term economic outcomes by unleashing inflation. How might the modern fiat money regime avoid that result?
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Article
- Introduction
- Political Economy of Supplying Money to a Growing Economy: Monetary Regimes and the Search for an Anchor to Stabilize the Value of Money
- Alternative Approaches to Money
- The Meanings of Money: A Sociological Perspective
- Central Bank Transparency: Causes, Consequences and Updates
- The Crisis of Invented Money: Liquidity Illusion and the Global Credit Meltdown
- International Financial Centers: The British-Empire, City-States and Commercially Oriented Politics
- The Jurisprudence of Global Money
- Credit Cooperatives in Early Israeli Statehood: Financial Institutions and Social Transformation
- Applied Legal History: Demystifying the Doctrine of Odious Debts
- Inventing Industrial Statistics
- The Moneylender as Magistrate: Nicholas Biddle and the Ideological Origins of Central Banking in the United States
- Coin Reconsidered: The Political Alchemy of Commodity Money
- Elements of Negotiability in Jewish Law in Medieval Christian Spain
- The Role of Lawyers in Producing the Rule of Law: Some Critical Reflections
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Article
- Introduction
- Political Economy of Supplying Money to a Growing Economy: Monetary Regimes and the Search for an Anchor to Stabilize the Value of Money
- Alternative Approaches to Money
- The Meanings of Money: A Sociological Perspective
- Central Bank Transparency: Causes, Consequences and Updates
- The Crisis of Invented Money: Liquidity Illusion and the Global Credit Meltdown
- International Financial Centers: The British-Empire, City-States and Commercially Oriented Politics
- The Jurisprudence of Global Money
- Credit Cooperatives in Early Israeli Statehood: Financial Institutions and Social Transformation
- Applied Legal History: Demystifying the Doctrine of Odious Debts
- Inventing Industrial Statistics
- The Moneylender as Magistrate: Nicholas Biddle and the Ideological Origins of Central Banking in the United States
- Coin Reconsidered: The Political Alchemy of Commodity Money
- Elements of Negotiability in Jewish Law in Medieval Christian Spain
- The Role of Lawyers in Producing the Rule of Law: Some Critical Reflections