The origin of money from the money-debt approach
Abstract
There are two fundamental approaches to the nature and origin of money that are incompatible with each other: money-commodity and money-debt. The first one has occupied a hegemonic position in the academy —and so outside it— throughout history. On the other hand, the money-debt approach was developed in response to the conventional view, although it currently occupies a marginal place in the academic sphere and is barely known beyond it. Despite its low popularity, the unorthodox outlook of money-debt is much more useful in order to understand the origin and nature of money; and represents a much more accurate analytical framework to monetary phenomena. In this paper a detailed review of the origin of money from this less-known approach is made in order to demonstrate its analytical superiority against the hegemonic approach that suffers from significant theoretical inconsistencies and a lack of empirical support.
Downloads
Article download
License
In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Iberian Journal of the History of Economic Thought is allowing unrestricted access to its content as from its publication in this electronic edition, and as such it is an open-access journal. The originals published in this journal are the property of the Complutense University of Madrid and any reproduction thereof in full or in part must cite the source. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 use and distribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This circumstance must be expressly stated in these terms where necessary. You can view the summary and the complete legal text of the licence.
Iberian Journal of the History of Economic Thought is an open access journal that does not charge authors for article processing (submission, review or editing) or publication.