Why do people want currency? Institutions, habit, and bricolage in an Argentine marketplace

Georgina Gomez ()

Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, 2018, vol. 15, issue 2, No 11, 413-430

Abstract: Abstract While initiatives in the social economy keep multiplying, the theoretical foundations for their research need further development; there is minimal reflection on the “institutional innovation” that these schemes promote. The study adopts an evolutionary approach to discuss the roles of habit, institutions, and bricolage in the organisation of new economic schemes. The research is grounded on the case of a complementary currency system designed by a small group of low-income vendors in a weekend marketplace in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was implemented to facilitate exchanges of goods in anticipation of the Christmas of 2012. Given the small size of the group, their high level of social cohesion, and their shared experiences with monetary plurality, they could have implemented simpler exchange systems such as direct barter or a non-perishable divisible commodity as general equivalent. In contrast, the vendors collectively decided they wanted their own currency with physical notes, a reserve, and a treasurer. The research is guided by the question of what made the group determined to configure their own currency. It contends that the shared habits of the vendors and the monetary institutions in Argentina, which include monetary plurality, supported a process of bricolage that drove to the institutional innovation of a marketplace currency.

Keywords: Complementary currency systems; Institutional innovation; Evolutionary economics; Informal vendors; Trueque; Argentina (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B5 G0 O3 R1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40844-018-0104-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:eaiere:v:15:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s40844-018-0104-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... theory/journal/40844

DOI: 10.1007/s40844-018-0104-y

Access Statistics for this article

Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review is currently edited by Kiichiro Yagi, Yuji Aruka and Takahiro Fujimoto

More articles in Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().