IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/eujhet/v10y2003i4p587-606.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Carl Menger and the network theory of money

Author

Listed:
  • Mikael Stenkula

Abstract

Carl Menger has occasionally been cited as a forerunner to the network theory of money. This article analyses Carl Menger's monetary theory and evaluates whether he was aware of the network characteristic of money from a retrospective angle. The result is mixed. Menger is one of the first to discuss the marketability and liquidity of an asset, which in German he denotes Absatzfahigkeit. This concept has a strong connection with the network aspect of a commodity. However, he is not distinct enough in his analysis and there is a lack of depth in his understanding.

Suggested Citation

  • Mikael Stenkula, 2003. "Carl Menger and the network theory of money," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(4), pages 587-606.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:10:y:2003:i:4:p:587-606
    DOI: 10.1080/0967256032000137737
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0967256032000137737
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0967256032000137737?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. Joseph Farrell & Garth Saloner, 1985. "Standardization, Compatibility, and Innovation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(1), pages 70-83, Spring.
    2. Lotz, Sebastien & Rocheteau, Guillaume, 2002. "On the Launching of a New Currency," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(3), pages 563-588, August.
    3. Lewin, Peter, 2001. "The Market Process and the Economics of QWERTY: Two Views," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 14(1), pages 65-96, March.
    4. Caskey, John P & St Laurent, Simon, 1994. "The Susan B. Anthony Dollar and the Theory of Coin/Note Substitutions," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 26(3), pages 495-510, August.
    5. Jones, Robert A, 1976. "The Origin and Development of Media of Exchange," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(4), pages 757-775, August.
    6. repec:cto:journl:v:20:y:2001:i:3:p:467-475 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Katz, Michael L & Shapiro, Carl, 1985. "Network Externalities, Competition, and Compatibility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(3), pages 424-440, June.
    8. Warneryd, Karl, 1990. "Legal restrictions and monetary evolution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 117-124, January.
    9. Niehans, Jurg, 1969. "Money in a Static Theory of Optimal Payment Arrangements," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 1(4), pages 706-726, November.
    10. Goodhart, Charles A. E., 1998. "The two concepts of money: implications for the analysis of optimal currency areas," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 407-432, August.
    11. White, Lawrence H, 1984. "Competitive Payments Systems and the Unit of Account," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(4), pages 699-712, September.
    12. George Selgin, 2003. "Adaptive Learning and the Transition to Fiat Money," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(484), pages 147-165, January.
    13. Michael Latzer & Stefan W. Schmitz (ed.), 2002. "Carl Menger and the Evolution of Payments Systems," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2630.
    14. Roland Vaubel, 1984. "The Government's Money Monopoly: Externalities or Natural Monopoly?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1), pages 27-58, February.
    15. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Wright, Randall, 1989. "On Money as a Medium of Exchange," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 927-954, August.
    16. Dowd, Kevin & Greenaway, David, 1993. "Currency Competition, Network Externalities and Switching Costs: Towards an Alternative View of Optimum Currency Areas," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(420), pages 1180-1189, September.
    17. Stefan W. Schmitz, 2002. "The Institutional Character of Electronic Money Schemes: Redeemability and the Unit of Account," Macroeconomics 0211009, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. N. Emrah Aydinonat, 2000. "Invisible Hand Explanations: the Case of Menger's Explanation of the 'Origin of Money'," Method and Hist of Econ Thought 0004001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Nicholas Economides, "undated". "Network Economics with Application to Finance," Financial Networks _004, Economics of Networks.
    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. Gilbert Bougi, 2005. "Pourquoi le problème monétaire de Menger reste-t-il non résolu?," CAE Working Papers 31, Aix-Marseille Université, CERGAM.
    2. Fregert, Klas, 2015. "Heckscher on the Slow Monetization of Sweden and His Incidental Refutation of Jevons and Menger," Working Papers 2015:23, Lund University, Department of Economics, revised 14 Oct 2015.
    3. Eduard Braun, 2015. "Carl Menger’s Contribution to Capital Theory," History of Economic Ideas, Fabrizio Serra Editore, Pisa - Roma, vol. 23(1), pages 77-100.
    4. Malavika Nair & Nicolás Cachanosky, 2017. "Bitcoin and entrepreneurship: breaking the network effect," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 30(3), pages 263-275, September.
    5. Waldenström, Daniel, 2004. "Is Swedish Research in Economic History Internationally Integrated?," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 566, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 12 Aug 2005.
    6. Daniel Nientiedt, 2023. "Menger’s account of the origin of money as a case study in the evolution of institutions," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 36(2), pages 205-215, June.

    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. Mileva, Elitza & Siegfried, Nikolaus, 2012. "Oil market structure, network effects and the choice of currency for oil invoicing," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 385-394.
    2. Costas Lapavitsas, 2003. "Money As €˜Universal Equivalent’ And Its Origin In Commodity Exchange," Working Papers 130, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK.
    3. Costas Lapavitsas, 2002. "The Emergence Of Money In Commodity Exchange, Or Money As Monopolist Of The Ability To Buy," Working Papers 126, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK.
    4. van Ees, Hans & Garretsen, Harry, 1995. "Existence and stability of conventions and institutions in a monetary economy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 275-288, October.
    5. George Selgin, 2003. "Adaptive Learning and the Transition to Fiat Money," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(484), pages 147-165, January.
    6. Giuseppe Mastromatteo & Luigi Ventura, 2007. "The origin of money: A survey of the contemporary literature," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 54(2), pages 195-224, June.
    7. Geoffrey Hodgson, 2002. "The Evolution of Institutions: An Agenda for Future Theoretical Research," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 111-127, June.
    8. Lamarche-Perrin, Alex & Orléan, André & Jensen, Pablo, 2018. "Coexistence of several currencies in presence of increasing returns to adoption," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 496(C), pages 612-619.
    9. Laurence Scialom, 1995. "Les modèles de paiements concurrentiels : éléments d'analyse critique ," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 46(1), pages 35-55.
    10. Karlo Kauko, 2018. "Did taxes, decrees or credibility drive money? Early nineteenth century Finland from a chartalist perspective," Scandinavian Economic History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 66(1), pages 73-90, January.
    11. Alexander W. Salter & William J. Luther, 2014. "Synthesizing State and Spontaneous Order Theories of Money," Advances in Austrian Economics, in: Entangled Political Economy, volume 18, pages 161-178, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    12. Laura Baraldi, 2004. "Esternalita' Di Rete: Una Rassegna," Working Papers 12_2004, D.E.S. (Department of Economic Studies), University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy.
    13. Alex Lamarche-Perrin & André Orléan & Pablo Jensen, 2018. "Coexistence of several currencies in presence of increasing returns to adoption," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) hal-01531277, HAL.
    14. Dror Goldberg, 2012. "The tax-foundation theory of fiat money," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 50(2), pages 489-497, June.
    15. Goodhart, Charles A. E., 1998. "The two concepts of money: implications for the analysis of optimal currency areas," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 407-432, August.
    16. Cesarano, Filippo, 1995. "The New Monetary Economics and the theory of money," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 445-455, May.
    17. Geoffrey M. Hodgson & Thorbjørn Knudsen, 2008. "The Complex Evolution of a Simple Traffic Convention: the Functions and Implications of Habit," International Economic Association Series, in: János Kornai & László Mátyás & Gérard Roland (ed.), Institutional Change and Economic Behaviour, chapter 9, pages 178-199, Palgrave Macmillan.
    18. Andrés Álvarez & Vincent Bignon, 2013. "L. Walras and C. Menger: two ways on the path of modern monetary theory," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 89-124, February.
    19. repec:dau:papers:123456789/11496 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Malavika Nair & Nicolás Cachanosky, 2017. "Bitcoin and entrepreneurship: breaking the network effect," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 30(3), pages 263-275, September.
    21. Alex Lamarche-Perrin & Andr'e Orl'ean & Pablo Jensen, 2018. "Coexistence of several currencies in presence of increasing returns to adoption," Papers 1801.04218, arXiv.org.

    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:taf:eujhet:v:10:y:2003:i:4:p:587-606. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REJH20 .

    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.