IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/hop/hopeec/v46y2014i2p177-210.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Puzzle of Metallism: Searching for the Nature of Money

Author

Listed:
  • Filippo Cesarano

Abstract

From the dawn of coined money to just a few decades ago, the monetary system had been linked, directly or indirectly, to a commodity. The age-long dominance of metallism is puzzling because the conventional character of money, or cartalist theory, had already been grasped in the earliest writings on the subject, notably by Plato. The evolution of the monetary system led to the emergence of metals as the dominant form of money owing to their well-known qualities of durability, homogeneity, divisibility, and the like. Yet, these physical qualities actually relate to market properties underlying the natural selection of media of exchange, enhancing the microeconomic efficiency in performing monetary functions and the macroeconomic effectiveness of maintaining monetary stability. After inquiring about the puzzle of metallism, this article investigates the development of the cartalist hypothesis and the origins of monetary management.

Suggested Citation

  • Filippo Cesarano, 2014. "The Puzzle of Metallism: Searching for the Nature of Money," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 46(2), pages 177-210, Summer.
    • Handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:46:y:2014:i:2:p:177-210
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hope.dukejournals.org/content/46/2/177.full.pdf+html
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Peneder, 2022. "Digitization and the evolution of money as a social technology of account," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 175-203, January.
    2. Gianfranco Tusset, 2020. "Gian Rinaldo Carli (1720-1795): Diagnosis and treatment of a monetary plague," HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 9(2), pages 39-65.
    3. Wang, Zhan-ao & Samuel, Ribeiro-Navarrete & Chen, Xiao-qian & Xu, Bing & Huang, Wei-lun, 2023. "Central bank digital currencies: Consumer data-driven sustainable operation management policy," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    4. Eduardo Garzón Espinosa & Esteban Cruz Hidalgo & Bibiana Medialdea García & Carlos Sánchez Mato, 2023. "The “Control Space†of the State: A Key Element to Address the Nature of Money," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 55(3), pages 448-465, September.

    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:hop:hopeec:v:46:y:2014:i:2:p:177-210. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Center for the History of Political Economy Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?viewby=journal&productid=45614 .

    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.