IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/soceco/v39y2010i1p100-109.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The international diffusion of an innovation: The spread of decimal currency

Author

Listed:
  • Tschoegl, Adrian E.

Abstract

This paper argues that decimalization of currency diffused as a consequence of all three forms of isomorphism: normative, coercive, and mimetic. Furthermore, it is ambiguous as to whether the normative isomorphism was well founded. The patterns of denominations show variety by country as a consequence of a number of factors, including cultural ones. These patterns tend to follow a powers-of-two (binary) principle for smaller denominations and a purer decimal principle for larger denominations, reflecting their utility for cash transactions and for store-of-value functions, respectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Tschoegl, Adrian E., 2010. "The international diffusion of an innovation: The spread of decimal currency," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 100-109, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:39:y:2010:i:1:p:100-109
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W5H-4X2DD0K-1/2/fbf2c225419e00e0ac45e5a5d0356424
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    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. Ernst Juerg Weber, 2009. "Pre-industrial Bimetallism: The Index Coin Hypothesis," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 09-12, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    2. Frenken, Koen & Saviotti, Paolo P. & Trommetter, Michel, 1999. "Variety and niche creation in aircraft, helicopters, motorcycles and microcomputers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 469-488, June.
    3. repec:bla:kyklos:v:36:y:1983:i:3:p:377-96 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Van Hove, Leo, 2001. "Optimal Denominations for Coins and Bank Notes: In Defense of the Principle of Least Effort," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(4), pages 1015-1021, November.
    5. George Selgin, 2003. "Steam, hot air, and small change: Matthew Boulton and the reform of Britain's coinage," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 56(3), pages 478-509, August.
    6. Harry A. Miskimin, 1967. "Two Reforms of Charlemagne? Weights and Measures in the Middle Ages," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 20(1), pages 35-52, April.
    7. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    8. Tore Ellingsen, 1997. "The Evolution of Bargaining Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 581-602.
    9. Wynne, Mark A., 1997. "More on optimal denominations for coins and currency," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 221-225, August.
    10. Telser, L. G., 1995. "Optimal denominations for coins and currency," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 425-427, October.
    11. Finnemore, Martha & Sikkink, Kathryn, 1998. "International Norm Dynamics and Political Change," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(4), pages 887-917, October.
    12. Gourevitch, Peter, 1978. "The second image reversed: the international sources of domestic politics," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(4), pages 881-912, October.
    13. Avant, Deborah, 2000. "From Mercenary to Citizen Armies: Explaining Change in the Practice of War," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 54(1), pages 41-72, January.
    14. B. W. Barnard, 1917. "The Use of Private Tokens for Money in the United States," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 31(4), pages 600-634.
    15. McCloskey, Donald N, 1983. "The Rhetoric of Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 481-517, June.
    16. van Hove, Leo & Heyndels, Bruno, 1996. "On the optimal spacing of currency denominations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 90(3), pages 547-552, May.
    17. Bodenhorn, Howard, 1993. "Small-Denomination Banknotes in Antebellum America," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 25(4), pages 812-827, November.
    18. Knotek II, Edward S., 2008. "Convenient prices, currency, and nominal rigidity: Theory with evidence from newspaper prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(7), pages 1303-1316, October.
    19. Nuño, J.C. & Grasland, C. & Blasco, F. & Guérin-Pace, F. & Olarrea, J. & Luque, B., 2005. "How many coins are you carrying in your pocket?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 354(C), pages 432-436.
    20. Amado, Sonia & Tekozel, Mert & Topsever, Yurdal & Ranyard, Rob & Del Missier, Fabio & Bonini, Nicolao, 2007. "Does "000,000" matter? Psychological effects of Turkish monetary reform," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 154-169, April.
    21. 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.
    22. Bolton, Gary E., 1997. "The rationality of splitting equally," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 365-381, March.
    23. Ofonagoro, Walter I., 1979. "From Traditional to British Currency in Southern Nigeria: Analysis of a Currency Revolution, 1880–1948," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(3), pages 623-654, September.
    24. Whynes, David K. & Frew, Emma J. & Philips, Zoe N. & Covey, Judith & Smith, Richard D., 2007. "On the numerical forms of contingent valuation responses," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 462-476, August.
    25. Charles P. Kindleberger, 1983. "Standards as Public, Collective and Private Goods," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(3), pages 377-396, August.
    26. A. Piatt Andrew, 1904. "The End of the Mexican Dollar," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 18(3), pages 321-356.
    27. Boeschoten, W C & Fase, M M G, 1989. "The Way We Pay with Money," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 7(3), pages 319-326, July.
    28. Sushil Bikhchandani & David Hirshleifer & Ivo Welch, 1998. "Learning from the Behavior of Others: Conformity, Fads, and Informational Cascades," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 151-170, Summer.
    29. Tschoegl, Adrian E, 1997. "The Optimal Denomination of Currency: A Conjecture," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(4), pages 546-554, November.
    30. Adrian E. Tschoegl, 2001. "The denominations of US coins: a case of institutional evolution," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 359-384.
    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. Mushin, Jerry, 2010. "New decimal currencies' relationships with their predecessors," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 316-318, April.

    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. Prescott, Brian C. & Shy, Oz, 2023. "Cash payments and the penny policy debate," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 80-94.
    2. Shy, Oz, 2020. "How currency denomination and the ATM affect the way we pay," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    3. Bouhdaoui, Y. & Bounie, D., 2012. "Efficient payments: How much do they cost for the Central Bank?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 1579-1584.
    4. Bouhdaoui, Y. & Bounie, D. & Van Hove, L., 2011. "Central banks and their banknote series: The efficiency-cost trade-off," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 1482-1488, July.
    5. Franses, Philip Hans & Kippers, Jeanine, 2007. "An empirical analysis of euro cash payments," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(8), pages 1985-1997, November.
    6. Farley Grubb, 2015. "Common Currency versus Currency Union: The U.S. Continental Dollar and Denominational Structure, 1775-1776," NBER Working Papers 21728, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Farley Grubb, 2015. "Common Currency versus Currency Union: The U.S. Continental Dollar and Denominational Structure, 1775-1779," Working Papers 15-10, University of Delaware, Department of Economics.
    8. Joshi Harit & Mukherjee, Saral, 2017. "Transitions in currency denomination structure as supply disruption and demand distortion: Efficiency, Effectiveness and Bullwhip," IIMA Working Papers WP 2017-05-02, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
    9. Sotiris Vandoros, 2013. "My five pounds are not as good as yours, so I will spend them," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(4), pages 546-559, December.
    10. Lee, Manjong, 2010. "Carrying cost of money and real effects of denomination structure," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 326-337, March.
    11. Yamamoto, Ken, 2014. "Fractal patterns related to dividing coins," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 51-57.
    12. Bouhdaoui, Y. & Bounie, D. & François, A., 2014. "Convenient prices, cash payments and price rigidity," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 329-337.
    13. Yiwei Huang & Yunxia Zhu & Subodha Kumar & Bala Shetty & Chelliah Sriskandarajah, 2020. "A Framework for Analyzing the U.S. Coin Supply Chain," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(12), pages 2736-2759, December.
    14. Chen, Heng & Huynh, Kim P. & Shy, Oz, 2019. "Cash versus card: Payment discontinuities and the burden of holding coins," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 192-201.
    15. Whynes, David K. & Frew, Emma J. & Philips, Zoe N. & Covey, Judith & Smith, Richard D., 2007. "On the numerical forms of contingent valuation responses," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 462-476, August.
    16. Fishman, Arthur & Fishman, Ram & Gneezy, Uri, 2019. "A tale of two food stands: Observational learning in the field," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 101-108.
    17. Wang, Peiwen & Chen, Minghua & Wu, Ji & Yan, Yuanyun, 2023. "Do peer effects matter in bank risk? Some cross-country evidence," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    18. Davide Crapis & Bar Ifrach & Costis Maglaras & Marco Scarsini, 2017. "Monopoly Pricing in the Presence of Social Learning," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3586-3608, November.
    19. Feri, Francesco & Meléndez-Jiménez, Miguel A. & Ponti, Giovanni & Vega-Redondo, Fernando, 2011. "Error cascades in observational learning: An experiment on the Chinos game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 136-146, September.
    20. Patrick Hummel & Brian Knight, 2015. "Sequential Or Simultaneous Elections? A Welfare Analysis," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(3), pages 851-887, August.

    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:soceco:v:39:y:2010:i:1:p:100-109. 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/620175 .

    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.