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Fiat Money as a Public Signal, Medium of Exchange, and Punishment

Author

Listed:
  • Gomis-Porqueras Pedro
  • Sun Ching-Jen

    (Department of Economics, Deakin University, 70 Elgar Road, Burwood, VIC 3125, Australia)

Abstract

This paper studies different welfare-enhancing roles that fiat money can have. To do so, we consider an indivisible monetary framework where agents are randomly and bilaterally matched, while the government has weak enforcement powers. Within this environment, we analyze state contingent monetary policies and characterize the resulting equilibria under different government record-keeping technologies. We show that a threat of injecting fiat money, conditional on private actions, can improve allocations and achieve efficiency. This type of state contingent policy is effective even when the government cannot observe any private trades and agents can only communicate with the government through cheap talk. In all these equilibria fiat money and self-enforcing credit are complements in the off equilibrium. Finally, this type of equilibria can also emerge even when the injection of fiat money is not a public signal.

Suggested Citation

  • Gomis-Porqueras Pedro & Sun Ching-Jen, 2020. "Fiat Money as a Public Signal, Medium of Exchange, and Punishment," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 20(2), pages 1-11, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejtec:v:20:y:2020:i:2:p:11:n:13
    DOI: 10.1515/bejte-2019-0098
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    cheap talk; record-keeping; fiat money;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E00 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - General
    • E40 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - General
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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