IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/econpa/v39y2020i2p104-117.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Identity, Fungibility and Anonymity of Money

Author

Listed:
  • Alastair Berg

Abstract

The fungibility of money is a characteristic which contributes to the quality of money. Fungibleness is itself related to the technical ability to associate a unit of currency with its past instances of exchange. This history is analogous to the identity of money. The identity of an individual unit of exchange is increasingly important as cash becomes less common, and banks require more information about the provenance of money. Private currencies, including Bitcoin and Libra, are themselves subject to tracking. The prior financial – and potentially political – activities of a user determine the fungibility of the currency they hold. Different money technologies provide varied levels of privacy, while cryptocurrencies offer users the potential to choose the level of information they share.

Suggested Citation

  • Alastair Berg, 2020. "The Identity, Fungibility and Anonymity of Money," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 39(2), pages 104-117, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:econpa:v:39:y:2020:i:2:p:104-117
    DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12273
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1759-3441.12273
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1759-3441.12273?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Davis,John B., 2010. "Individuals and Identity in Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521173537.
    2. Williamson, Oliver E, 1979. "Transaction-Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractural Relations," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 233-261, October.
    3. Claudia R. Sahm & Matthew D. Shapiro & Joel Slemrod, 2012. "Check in the Mail or More in the Paycheck: Does the Effectiveness of Fiscal Stimulus Depend on How It Is Delivered?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 216-250, August.
    4. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Wright, Randall, 1991. "A contribution to the pure theory of money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 215-235, April.
    5. Cynthia Kinnan & Robert Townsend, 2012. "Kinship and Financial Networks, Formal Financial Access, and Risk Reduction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 289-293, May.
    6. Davis,John B., 2010. "Individuals and Identity in Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107001923.
    7. Donato Masciandaro, 1999. "Money Laundering: the Economics of Regulation," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 225-240, May.
    8. Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2016. "The Curse of Cash," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10798.
    9. Posner, Richard A, 1980. "A Theory of Primitive Society, with Special Reference to Law," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(1), pages 1-53, April.
    10. Demsetz, Harold, 1988. "The Theory of the Firm Revisited," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 4(1), pages 141-161, Spring.
    11. Andres Alvarez, 2004. "Learning to choose a commodity-money: Carl Menger's theory of imitation and the search monetary framework," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(1), pages 53-78.
    12. Sean Foley & Jonathan R Karlsen & Tālis J Putniņš, 2019. "Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin: How Much Illegal Activity Is Financed through Cryptocurrencies?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(5), pages 1798-1853.
    13. Brunner, Karl & Meltzer, Allan H, 1971. "The Uses of Money: Money in the Theory of an Exchange Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(5), pages 784-805, December.
    14. Edwin M. Truman & Peter Reuter, 2004. "Chasing Dirty Money: The Fight Against Anti-Money Laundering," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 381, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ogbeide, Henry & Thomson, Mary Elizabeth & Gonul, Mustafa Sinan & Pollock, Andrew Castairs & Bhowmick, Sanjay & Bello, Abdullahi Usman, 2023. "The anti-money laundering risk assessment: A probabilistic approach," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vahabi,Mehrdad, 2019. "The Political Economy of Predation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107591370, January.
    2. Tomas Williams & Pablo Slutzky & Mauricio Villamizar-Villegas, 2019. "Drug Money and Bank Lending: The Unintended Consequences of Anti-Money Laundering Policies," Working Papers 2019-5, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy, revised May 2020.
    3. Sébastien Lotz & Françoise Vasselin, 2019. "A New Monetarist Model Of Fiat And E‐Money," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 57(1), pages 498-514, January.
    4. Harvey S. James Jr, 2000. "Separating contract from governance," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(2), pages 47-61.
    5. Fabrizio Colella & Keith Maskus & Alessandro Peri, 2024. "Unintended Consequences of Money-Laundering Regulations," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 2403, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
    6. Iavor Marangozov, 2005. "From Practice to Theory of the International Joint Ventures," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 2, pages 44-77.
    7. Mahoney, Joseph T. & McNally, Regina C., 2004. "Explaining and Predicting the Choice of Organizational Form: Integrating Performance Ambiguity and Asset Specificity Effects," Working Papers 04-0109, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    8. Robert Urquhart, 2012. "The price of the market: pursuit of self-interest as annihilation of self," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 59(4), pages 431-457, December.
    9. Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, 2017. "Institutional naturalism: reflections on Masahiko Aoki’s contribution to institutional economics," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 501-522, December.
    10. Geoffrey M. Hodgson, 2010. "Limits of Transaction Cost Analysis," Chapters, in: Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics, chapter 28, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Yallwe, Hagos Alem & Buscemi, Antonino, 2011. "Money laundry and financial development," MPRA Paper 32219, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. D. Bartolozzi & M. Gara & D.J. Marchetti & D. Masciandaro, 2019. "Designing The Anti-Money Laundering Supervisor: Theory, Institutions And Empirics," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 19126, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    13. Tiziano Distefano & Pietro Guarnieri, 2019. "Collective Actions: a Network Approach," Discussion Papers 2019/244, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    14. Giuseppe Mastromatteo & Luigi Ventura, 2007. "The origin of money: A survey of the contemporary literature," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 54(2), pages 195-224, June.
    15. Kannan Srikanth & Phanish Puranam, 2014. "The Firm as a Coordination System: Evidence from Software Services Offshoring," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(4), pages 1253-1271, August.
    16. Stavros A. Drakopoulos, 2020. "Pay Level Comparisons in Job Satisfaction Research and Mainstream Economic Methodology," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 825-842, March.
    17. Jain, Amit, 2011. "Connaissance, ressources, concurrence et les frontières de l'entreprise," Economics Thesis from University Paris Dauphine, Paris Dauphine University, number 123456789/6403 edited by Thiétart, Raymond-Alain.
    18. Drakopoulos, Stavros A., 2022. "The Conceptual Resilience of the Atomistic Individual in Mainstream Economic Rationality," MPRA Paper 112944, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. James Jr., Harvey S., 1998. "Are employment and managerial control equivalent? Evidence from an electronics producer," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 447-471, September.
    20. Nathan Berg & Jeong-Yoo Kim & Kyu Min Lee, 2021. "Why is parochialism prevalent?: an evolutionary approach," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 16(4), pages 769-796, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:econpa:v:39:y:2020:i:2:p:104-117. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esausea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.