IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jimfin/v117y2021ics0261560621000929.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Monetary theory reversed: Virtual currency issuance and the inflation tax

Author

Listed:
  • Marchiori, Luca

Abstract

This study develops a monetary model featuring (i) ‘virtual’ goods, sold against virtual currency, and (ii) agents providing payment services (miners), remunerated with newly issued virtual currency. Virtual money growth may have effects opposite to those predicted by monetary theory. Declining virtual currency issuance, like in Bitcoin, raises the price of virtual goods, which counteracts the traditional impact of a reduced inflation tax. The paper also shows that welfare improves as virtual currency issuance decreases, but only if the virtual currency growth rate is sufficiently larger than the fiat money growth rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Marchiori, Luca, 2021. "Monetary theory reversed: Virtual currency issuance and the inflation tax," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jimfin:v:117:y:2021:i:c:s0261560621000929
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jimonfin.2021.102441
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261560621000929
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jimonfin.2021.102441?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schilling, Linda & Uhlig, Harald, 2019. "Some simple bitcoin economics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 16-26.
    2. John Bagnall & David Bounie & Kim P. Huynh & Anneke Kosse & Tobias Schmidt & Scott Schuh, 2016. "Consumer Cash Usage: A Cross-Country Comparison with Payment Diary Survey Data," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(4), pages 1-61, December.
    3. Chari, V. V. & Christiano, Lawrence J. & Kehoe, Patrick J., 1996. "Optimality of the Friedman rule in economies with distorting taxes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 203-223, April.
    4. Pavel Ciaian & Miroslava Rajcaniova & d’Artis Kancs, 2016. "The economics of BitCoin price formation," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(19), pages 1799-1815, April.
    5. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Sanches, Daniel, 2019. "Can currency competition work?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 1-15.
    6. Julien Prat & Benjamin Walter, 2021. "An Equilibrium Model of the Market for Bitcoin Mining," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(8), pages 2415-2452.
    7. Svensson, Lars E. O., 1985. "Currency prices, terms of trade, and interest rates: A general equilibrium asset-pricing cash-in-advance approach," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1-2), pages 17-41, February.
    8. 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.
    9. Holman, Jill A. & Neanidis, Kyriakos C., 2006. "Financing government expenditures in an open economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(8), pages 1315-1337, August.
    10. Joshua R. Hendrickson & Thomas L. Hogan & William J. Luther, 2016. "The Political Economy Of Bitcoin," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(2), pages 925-939, April.
    11. Alberto Giovannini & Bart Turtelboom, 1992. "Currency Substitution," NBER Working Papers 4232, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Guidotti, Pablo E, 1993. "Currency Substitution and Financial Innovation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 25(1), pages 109-124, February.
    13. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1982. "Interest rates and currency prices in a two-country world," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 335-359.
    14. Thomas F. Cooley & Gary D. Hansen, 1991. "The welfare costs of moderate inflations," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 483-518.
    15. Morten Linnemann Bech & Rodney Garratt, 2017. "Central bank cryptocurrencies," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, September.
    16. Lucas, Robert E, Jr & Stokey, Nancy L, 1987. "Money and Interest in a Cash-in-Advance Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 491-513, May.
    17. Berentsen, Aleksander & Camera, Gabriele & Waller, Christopher, 2007. "Money, credit and banking," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 171-195, July.
    18. Bruno Biais & Christophe Bisière & Matthieu Bouvard & Catherine Casamatta, 2019. "The Blockchain Folk Theorem," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(5), pages 1662-1715.
    19. S. Rao Aiyagari & R. Anton Braun & Zvi Eckstein, 1998. "Transaction Services, Inflation, and Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1274-1301, December.
    20. Atkinson, A. B. & Stiglitz, J. E., 1976. "The design of tax structure: Direct versus indirect taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1-2), pages 55-75.
    21. Wilko Bolt & Maarten R.C. Van Oordt, 2020. "On the Value of Virtual Currencies," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(4), pages 835-862, June.
    22. Gabriele Camera & Yili Chien, 2016. "Two Monetary Models with Alternating Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(5), pages 1051-1064, August.
    23. Guidotti, Pablo E. & Vegh, Carlos A., 1993. "Currency substitution and the optimal inflation tax," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 65-70.
    24. Lucas, Robert Jr. & Stokey, Nancy L., 1983. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 55-93.
    25. Gillman, Max, 1993. "The welfare cost of inflation in a cash-in-advance economy with costly credit," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 97-115, February.
    26. Rainer Böhme & Nicolas Christin & Benjamin Edelman & Tyler Moore, 2015. "Bitcoin: Economics, Technology, and Governance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(2), pages 213-238, Spring.
    27. Svensson, Lars E O, 1985. "Money and Asset Prices in a Cash-in-Advance Economy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(5), pages 919-944, 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. Kujtim Avdiu & Stephan Unger, 2022. "Predicting Inflation—A Holistic Approach," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-14, March.
    2. Chunming Shen, 2022. "Digital RMB, RMB Internationalization and Sustainable Development of the International Monetary System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-22, May.
    3. Michiel Bijlsma & Carin Cruijsen & Nicole Jonker & Jelmer Reijerink, 2024. "What Triggers Consumer Adoption of Central Bank Digital Currency?," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 65(1), pages 1-40, February.

    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. Luca Marchiori, 2018. "Monetary theory reversed: Virtual currency issuance and miners’ remuneration," BCL working papers 115, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
    2. Schilling, Linda & Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Uhlig, Harald, 2024. "Central bank digital currency: When price and bank stability collide," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    3. Benigno, Pierpaolo & Schilling, Linda M. & Uhlig, Harald, 2022. "Cryptocurrencies, currency competition, and the impossible trinity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    4. Schilling, Linda & Uhlig, Harald, 2019. "Some simple bitcoin economics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 16-26.
    5. Rodrigo Suescún M., 1995. "Growth, Welfare Costs and Aggregate Fluctuations in Economies with Monetary Taxation," Borradores de Economia 036, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    6. Flori, Andrea, 2019. "News and subjective beliefs: A Bayesian approach to Bitcoin investments," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 336-356.
    7. Marcelo A. T. Aragão, 2021. "A Few Things You Wanted to Know about the Economics of CBDCs, but were Afraid to Model: a survey of what we can learn from who has done," Working Papers Series 554, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    8. Vasilev, Aleksandar, 2022. "A business-cycle model with cash- and credit goods and a modified cash-in-advance feature: lessons for Bulgaria (1999-2020)," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 26(1 (forthc), pages 1-13.
    9. Heer, Burkhard, 2003. "Welfare costs of inflation in a dynamic economy with search unemployment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 255-272, November.
    10. Hromcova, Jana, 2003. "Money and growth in a cash-in-advance economy with costly credit," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 1113-1136, December.
    11. S. Boragan Aruoba & Christopher J. Waller & Randall Wright, 2009. "Money and capital: a quantitative analysis," Working Papers 2009-031, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    12. Philip Arestis & Alexander Mihailov, 2011. "Classifying Monetary Economics: Fields And Methods From Past To Future," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 769-800, September.
    13. Kee-Youn Kang, 2023. "Cryptocurrency and double spending history: transactions with zero confirmation," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(2), pages 453-491, February.
    14. Koreshkova, Tatyana A., 2006. "A quantitative analysis of inflation as a tax on the underground economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 773-796, May.
    15. Lu, Chia-Hui & Chen, Been-Lon & Hsu, Mei, 2011. "The dynamic welfare cost of seignorage tax and consumption tax in a neoclassical growth model with a cash-in-advance constraint," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 247-258, June.
    16. Hanna Halaburda & Guillaume Haeringer & Joshua Gans & Neil Gandal, 2022. "The Microeconomics of Cryptocurrencies," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 971-1013, September.
    17. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Niepelt, Dirk, 2019. "On the equivalence of private and public money," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 27-41.
    18. Raphael Auer, 2019. "Beyond the doomsday economics of "proof-of-work" in cryptocurrencies," BIS Working Papers 765, Bank for International Settlements.
    19. Zimmerman, Peter, 2020. "Blockchain structure and cryptocurrency prices," Bank of England working papers 855, Bank of England.
    20. Ragot, Xavier, 2014. "The case for a financial approach to money demand," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 94-107.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Virtual currency; Fiat money; Inflation tax; Money supply;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E41 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Demand for Money
    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • 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:eee:jimfin:v:117:y:2021:i:c:s0261560621000929. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/30443 .

    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.