IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2003-52.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Estimating the worldwide volume of counterfeit U.S. currency: data and extrapolation

Author

Listed:

Abstract

The incidence of currency counterfeiting and the possible total stock of counterfeits in circulation are popular topics of speculation and discussion in the press and are of substantial practical interest to the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. Secret Service. This paper assembles data from Federal Reserve and U.S. Secret Service sources and presents a range of estimates for the number of counterfeits in circulation. In addition, the paper presents figures on counterfeit passing activity by denomination, location, and method of production. The paper has two main conclusions: first, the stock of counterfeits in the world as a whole is likely on the order of 1 or fewer per 10,000 in both piece and value terms; second, losses to the U.S. public from the most commonly used note, the $20, are relatively small, and are miniscule when only counterfeit notes of reasonable quality are considered.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruth A. Judson & Richard D. Porter, 2003. "Estimating the worldwide volume of counterfeit U.S. currency: data and extrapolation," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2003-52, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2003-52
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2003/200352/200352abs.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2003/200352/200352pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward J. Green & Warren E. Weber, 1996. "Will the new $100 bill decrease counterfeiting?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 20(Sum), pages 3-10.
    2. Yvan Lengwiler, 1997. "A model of money counterfeits," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 65(2), pages 123-132, June.
    3. Edgar L. Feige, 2005. "Overseas Holdings Of U.S.Currency And The Underground Economy," Macroeconomics 0501022, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Porter, Richard D. & Weinbach, Gretchen C., 1999. "Currency ratios and U.S. underground economic activity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 355-361, June.
    5. Susan Pozo (ed.), 1996. "Exploring the Underground Economy," Books from Upjohn Press, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, number eue, August.
    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. 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.
    2. Bouhdaoui, Y. & Bounie, D. & Van Hove, L., 2013. "When do plastic bills lower the bill for the central bank? A model and estimates for the U.S," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 45-60.
    3. John Chant, 2004. "Counterfeiting: A Canadian Perspective," Staff Working Papers 04-33, Bank of Canada.
    4. Kahn, Charles M. & Roberds, William, 2009. "Why pay? An introduction to payments economics," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 1-23, January.

    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. Ruth A. Judson & Richard D. Porter, 2010. "Estimating the volume of counterfeit U.S. currency in circulation worldwide: data and extrapolation," Policy Discussion Paper Series PDP-2010-02, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    2. Judson, Ruth A. & Porter, Richard D., 2004. "Currency demand by federal reserve cash office: what do we know?," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 273-285.
    3. Friedrich Schneider & Robert Klinglmair, 2004. "Shadow economies around the world: what do we know?," Economics working papers 2004-03, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    4. Aksoy, Yunus & Piskorski, Tomasz, 2006. "U.S. domestic money, inflation and output," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 183-197, March.
    5. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff & Miguel A. Savastano, 2014. "Addicted to Dollars," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(1), pages 1-50, May.
    6. Porter, Richard D. & Weinbach, Gretchen C., 1999. "Currency ratios and U.S. underground economic activity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 355-361, June.
    7. Friedrich Schneider & Friedrich Schneider, 2008. "Shadow Economies and Corruption all over the World: What do we Really Know?," Chapters, in: Michael Pickhardt & Edward Shinnick (ed.), The Shadow Economy, Corruption and Governance, chapter 7, pages 122-187, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Enste, Dominik & Schneider, Friedrich, 1998. "Increasing Shadow Economies all over the World - Fiction or Reality?," IZA Discussion Papers 26, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Cebula, Richard J. & Coombs, Christopher & Yang, Bill Z., 2009. "The Tax Reform Act of 1986: An Assessment in Terms of Tax Compliance Behavior," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 62(2), pages 145-162.
    10. Aksoy, Yunus & Piskorski, Tomasz, 2005. "US domestic currency in forecast error variance decompositions of inflation and output," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 265-271, February.
    11. Edgar L. Feige, 2000. "Taxation for the 21st century: the automated payment transaction (APT) tax," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 15(31), pages 474-511.
    12. Friedrich Schneider, 2000. "Illegal activities, but still values added ones (?): size, causes, and measurement of the shadow economies all over the world," Economics working papers 2000-10, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    13. Richard J. Cebula, 2001. "Impact of income-detection technology and other factors on aggregate income tax evasion:the case of the United States," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 54(219), pages 401-415.
    14. Schneider, Friedrich, 2002. "The Size and Development of the Shadow Economies of 22 Transition and 21 OECD Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 514, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Feige, Edgar L. & Cebula, Richard, 2011. "America’s unreported economy: measuring the size, growth and determinants of income tax evasion in the U.S," MPRA Paper 34781, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Schneider, Friedrich, 2004. "The Size of the Shadow Economies of 145 Countries all over the World: First Results over the Period 1999 to 2003," IZA Discussion Papers 1431, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Friedrich Schneider & Dominik Enste, 1999. "Shadow Economies Around the World - Size, Causes, and Consequences," CESifo Working Paper Series 196, CESifo.
    18. Feige, Edgar L., 2012. "The myth of the “cashless society”: How much of America’s currency is overseas?," MPRA Paper 42169, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Shao, Enchuan & Fung, Ben S.C., 2016. "Counterfeit quality and verification in a monetary exchange," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 52(PA), pages 13-25.
    20. Feige, Edgar L. & Cebula, Richard, 2011. "America’s Underground Economy: Measuring the Size, Growth and Determinants of Income Tax Evasion in the U.S," MPRA Paper 29672, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Counterfeits and counterfeiting; Dollar; American;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedgfe:2003-52. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.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.