Would Local Currencies Make a Good Local Economic Development Policy Tool? The Case of Ithaca Hours

David Grover
Additional contact information
David Grover: Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, England

Environment and Planning C, 2006, vol. 24, issue 5, 719-737

Abstract: The author investigates the relationship between local currencies and local economic development (LED) with the aid of evidence from a case study of the ‘Ithaca Hours’ currency in Ithaca, New York, USA. He aims to answer two related questions: (1) are local currencies good for local economic development? And (2) would they make a good local economic development policy tool? The circulation of Hours is found both to increase economic activity and to preserve local skills which might have been lost if the currency system had not been in place. He concludes, however, that the Hours model should not be adopted as policy without modifications, because the design suffers from poor incentive structures which depress circulation and limit the positive effects of the currency on LED.

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/c1p (text/html)

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:sae:envirc:v:24:y:2006:i:5:p:719-737

DOI: 10.1068/c1p

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning C
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().