Money as mumeraire: doctrinal aspects and contemporary relevance

Joseph Aschheim and George Tavlas
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Joseph Aschheim: The George Washington University, Washington (USA)

Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, 2006, vol. 59, issue 239, 333-361

Abstract: At the beginning of the twentieth century, most economists took it for granted that the primary function of money is its role as a medium of exchange and that moneyshould consist of, or be backed by, gold, or silver, or both. This paper discusses three writers--Alexander Del Mar, Georg Knapp, and John Maynard Keynes--who took a different tack. By endeavouring to explain what money is, they focused on the capacity of money to have value. In so doing, they gave primacy to the unit-of-account function of money and originated the theory of chartalism. We show that the primacy placed on the numeraire by those writers provides insights into present-day analyses of general equilibrium, neutral money, business cycles, and currency-area formation.

Keywords: Money (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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