Regionalwährungen in Deutschland: Lokale Konkurrenz für den Euro?

Gerhard Rösl

No 2006,43, Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies from Deutsche Bundesbank

Abstract: In a surprisingly growing number of regions in Germany private "regional currencies" are issued as a cash substitute for the euro. Currently, these regional currencies are conceived almost exclusively as Schwundgeld (depreciative currency), which loses value on a predetermined timescale. This loss of value is intended to encourage the money owners to spend their money quickly in order to boost local demand. The paper shows that the issuance of unofficial parallel currencies is not a fundamentally new phenomenon neither in Germany nor in other European countries. The theoretical assumptions of the Schwundgeld concept (Silvio Gesell (1862 – 1930)) are highly flawed and suboptimal from a welfare-theoretical perspective. However, the current economic welfare losses resulting from the issuance of Schwundgeld are negligibly small.

Keywords: Regionalwährungen; Regionalgeld; Parallelgeld; Gesell; Währungssubstitution; Schwundgeld; Freigeld; currency substitution; private money (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E40 E41 E42 E50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-geo and nep-mac
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:bubdp1:5171

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