IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kea/keappr/ker-200712-23-2-01.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Indivisibility and Non-Neutrality of Money

Author

Listed:
  • Manjong Lee

    (Kyung Hee University)

Abstract

In this paper, we study the real effects of different degrees of divisibility of money in a random matching model. When money is very indivisible, as it is seemingly true in most of the world before the 19th century, welfare increases as the divisibility of money increases (non-neutrality). However, when the degree of divisibility is sufficiently high, as it is seemingly true for the current U.S. coinage system, there would be little or no welfare loss from reducing the degree of divisibility, the elimination of the penny.

Suggested Citation

  • Manjong Lee, 2007. "Indivisibility and Non-Neutrality of Money," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 23, pages 223-242.
  • Handle: RePEc:kea:keappr:ker-200712-23-2-01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://keapaper.kea.ne.kr/RePEc/kea/keappr/KER-200712-23-2-01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin Feldstein, 1999. "Tax Avoidance And The Deadweight Loss Of The Income Tax," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 674-680, November.
    2. Shi Shougong, 1995. "Money and Prices: A Model of Search and Bargaining," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 467-496, December.
    3. Berentsen, Aleksander & Rocheteau, Guillaume, 2002. "On the efficiency of monetary exchange: how divisibility of money matters," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(8), pages 1621-1649, November.
    4. Sargent, Thomas J & Velde, Francois R, 1999. "The Big Problem of Small Change," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 31(2), pages 137-161, May.
    5. Arthur J. Rolnick & Francois R. Velde & Warren E. Weber, 1997. "The debasement puzzle: an essay on medieval monetary history," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 21(Fall), pages 8-20.
    6. Redish,Angela, 2006. "Bimetallism," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521028936.
    7. Zhu, Tao, 2005. "Existence of a monetary steady state in a matching model: divisible money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 135-160, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Manjong Lee & Neil Wallace, 2006. "Optimal divisibility when money is costly to produce," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(3), pages 541-556, July.
    2. Allan Hernandez-Chanto, 2020. "The extrinsic value of low-denomination money holdings," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(2), pages 263-280, October.
    3. Young Sik Kim & Manjong Lee, 2012. "Return on Commodity Money, Small Change Problems, and Fiat Money," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(2‐3), pages 533-549, March.
    4. Williamson, Stephen & Wright, Randall, 2010. "New Monetarist Economics: Models," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 2, pages 25-96, Elsevier.
    5. Jin, Gu & Zhu, Tao, 2019. "Debasements and Small Coins: An Untold Story of Commodity Money," MPRA Paper 93057, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Ricardo Lagos & Randall Wright, 2005. "A Unified Framework for Monetary Theory and Policy Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(3), pages 463-484, June.
    7. Bignon, Vincent & Dutu, Richard, 2017. "Coin Assaying And Commodity Money," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(6), pages 1305-1335, September.
    8. Menzio, Guido & Shi, Shouyong & Sun, Hongfei, 2013. "A monetary theory with non-degenerate distributions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2266-2312.
    9. Berentsen, Aleksander & McBride, Michael & Rocheteau, Guillaume, 2017. "Limelight on dark markets: Theory and experimental evidence on liquidity and information," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 70-90.
    10. Guillaume Rocheteau & Pierre-Olivier Weill & Tsz-Nga Wong, 2015. "Working through the Distribution: Money in the Short and Long Run," NBER Working Papers 21779, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Huang, Pidong & Igarashi, Yoske, 2015. "Trejos–Wright with a 2-unit bound: Existence and stability of monetary steady states," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 55-62.
    12. Mahmoudi, Babak, 2013. "Open-Market Operations, Asset Distributions, and Endogenous Market Segmentation," MPRA Paper 50089, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Rocheteau, Guillaume & Weill, Pierre-Olivier & Wong, Russell, 2018. "A tractable model of monetary exchange with ex-post heterogeneity," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(3), September.
    14. Aleksander Berentsen, 2002. "On the Distribution of Money Holdings in a Random-Matching Model," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 43(3), pages 945-954, August.
    15. Wallace, Neil & Zhu, Tao, 2004. "A commodity-money refinement in matching models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 246-258, August.
    16. Rocheteau, Guillaume & Rupert, Peter & Shell, Karl & Wright, Randall, 2008. "General equilibrium with nonconvexities and money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 294-317, September.
    17. Aleksander Berentsen & Guillaume Rocheteau, 2002. "Money in Bilateral Trade," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 138(IV), pages 489-506, December.
    18. Bajaj, Ayushi, 2018. "Undefeated equilibria of the Shi–Trejos–Wright model under adverse selection," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 957-986.
    19. John H. Munro, 2009. "Coinage and Monetary Policies in Burgundian Flanders during the late-medieval 'Bullion Famines',. 1384 - 1482," Working Papers tecipa-361, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    20. Kim, Young Sik & Lee, Manjong, 2010. "A model of debit card as a means of payment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1359-1368, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    money; indivisibility; non-neutrality; matching model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E40 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - General
    • E51 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Money Supply; Credit; Money Multipliers

    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:kea:keappr:ker-200712-23-2-01. 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: KEA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/keaaaea.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.