EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Central banks and their banknote series: The efficiency-cost trade-off

Yassine Bouhdaoui, D. Bounie and L. Van Hove

Economic Modelling, 2011, vol. 28, issue 4, 1482-1488

Abstract: One of the most important results of theoretical research on currency systems is that spacing denominations apart by a factor of two is better than a factor of three as this lowers the average number of notes and coins exchanged in transactions. These theoretical studies also claim that an efficient denominational mix has the additional benefit of keeping down the production costs incurred by the central bank. This paper challenges this claim and demonstrates that more efficient currency systems can also be more costly. Central banks therefore face an efficiency-cost trade-off and have to weigh the benefits for transactors against those for the central bank itself.

Keywords: Currency; Central; banks; Efficient; payments; Production; costs; Simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999311000472
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:28:y:2011:i:4:p:1482-1488

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly

More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:28:y:2011:i:4:p:1482-1488