IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/chu/wpaper/19-04.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Endogenous Market Formation and Monetary Trade: an Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriele Camera

    (Economic Science Institute, Chapman University & University of Bologna)

  • Dror Goldberg

    (The Open University of Israel)

  • Avi Weiss

    (Bar-Ilan University & Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel)

Abstract

The theory of money assumes decentralized bilateral exchange and excludes centralized multilateral exchange. However, endogenizing the exchange process is critical for understanding the conditions that support the use of money. We develop a “travelling game” to study the emergence of decentralized and centralized exchange, theoretically and experimentally. Players located on separate islands can either trade locally, or pay a cost to trade elsewhere, so decentralized and centralized markets can both emerge in equilibrium. Theformerminimizetradecoststhroughmonetaryexchange; thelattermaximizesoverall surplus through non-monetary exchange. Monetary trade emerges when coordination is problematic, while centralized trade emerges otherwise. This shows that to understand the emergence of money it is important to amend standard theory such that the market structure is endogenized.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriele Camera & Dror Goldberg & Avi Weiss, 2019. "Endogenous Market Formation and Monetary Trade: an Experiment," Working Papers 19-04, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:19-04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_papers/261/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gabriele Camera & Charles Noussair & Steven Tucker, 2003. "Rate-of-return dominance and efficiency in an experimental economy," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 22(3), pages 629-660, October.
    2. John C. Harsanyi & Reinhard Selten, 1988. "A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262582384, December.
    3. Jack Ochs & John Duffy, 1999. "Emergence of Money as a Medium of Exchange: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 847-877, September.
    4. Frank Heinemann & Rosemarie Nagel & Peter Ockenfels, 2009. "Measuring Strategic Uncertainty in Coordination Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 181-221.
    5. Marimon, Ramon & Sunder, Shyam, 1994. "Expectations and Learning under Alternative Monetary Regimes: An Experimental Approach," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 4(1), pages 131-162, January.
    6. Dan Kovenock, 2002. "Fiat Exchange in Finite Economies," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(2), pages 147-157, April.
    7. 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.
    8. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    9. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    10. Ross M. Starr, 1972. "The Structure of Exchange in Barter and Monetary Economies," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 86(2), pages 290-302.
    11. Marimon, Ramon & Sunder, Shyam, 1993. "Indeterminacy of Equilibria in a Hyperinflationary World: Experimental Evidence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(5), pages 1073-1107, September.
    12. Huber, Jürgen & Shubik, Martin & Sunder, Shyam, 2014. "Sufficiency of an outside bank and a default penalty to support the value of fiat money: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 317-337.
    13. Roberto A. Weber, 2006. "Managing Growth to Achieve Efficient Coordination in Large Groups," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 114-126, March.
    14. Ostroy, Joseph M. & Starr, Ross M., 1990. "The transactions role of money," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: B. M. Friedman & F. H. Hahn (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 3-62, Elsevier.
    15. Gabriele Camera & Marco Casari, 2014. "The Coordination Value of Monetary Exchange: Experimental Evidence," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 290-314, February.
    16. Gabriele Camera & Robert R. Reed & Christopher J. Waller, 2003. "Jack of All Trades or a Master of One? Specialization, Trade, and Money," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(4), pages 1275-1294, November.
    17. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    18. Lucas, Robert E., 1984. "Money in a theory of finance," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 9-46, January.
    19. Haruvy, Ernan & Stahl, Dale O., 2004. "Deductive versus inductive equilibrium selection: experimental results," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 319-331, March.
    20. Kocherlakota, Narayana R., 1998. "Money Is Memory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 232-251, August.
    21. Diamond, Peter A, 1982. "Aggregate Demand Management in Search Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(5), pages 881-894, October.
    22. Deck, Cary A. & McCabe, Kevin A. & Porter, David P., 2006. "Why stable fiat money hyperinflates: Results from an experimental economy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 471-486, November.
    23. Maria Bigoni & Gabriele Camera & Marco Casari, 2019. "Partners or Strangers? Cooperation, Monetary Trade, and the Choice of Scale of Interaction," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 195-227, May.
    24. Peng Lian & Charles R. Plott, 1998. "General equilibrium, markets, macroeconomics and money in a laboratory experimental environment," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 12(1), pages 21-75.
    25. Camera, Gabriele, 2000. "Money, Search, And Costly Matchmaking," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(3), pages 289-323, September.
    26. McCabe, Kevin A., 1989. "Fiat money as a store of value in an experimental market," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 215-231, October.
    27. Charalambos D Aliprantis & Gabriele Camera & Daniela Puzzello, 2007. "Contagion Equilibria in a Monetary Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(1), pages 277-282, January.
    28. Hellwig, Martin F., 1993. "The challenge of monetary theory," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 215-242, April.
    29. Dean Corbae & Ted Temzelides & Randall Wright, 2003. "Directed Matching and Monetary Exchange," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(3), pages 731-756, May.
    30. Brown, Paul M., 1996. "Experimental evidence on money as a medium of exchange," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 583-600, April.
    31. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Wright, Randall, 1993. "A Search-Theoretic Approach to Monetary Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 63-77, March.
    32. Goldberg, Dror, 2007. "Money with partially directed search," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 979-993, May.
    33. John Duffy & Daniela Puzzello, 2014. "Gift Exchange versus Monetary Exchange: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(6), pages 1735-1776, June.
    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. Rud, Olga A. & Rabanal, Jean Paul & Sharifova, Manizha, 2019. "An experiment on the efficiency of bilateral exchange under incomplete markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 253-267.
    2. Gabriele Camera & Lukas Hohl & Rolf Weder, 2023. "Inequality as a barrier to economic integration? An experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(2), pages 383-411, April.
    3. Gabriele Camera, 2024. "Introducing New Forms of Digital Money: Evidence from the Laboratory," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 56(1), pages 153-184, February.
    4. John Duffy & Daniela Puzzello, 2022. "The Friedman Rule: Experimental Evidence," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 63(2), pages 671-698, May.
    5. Adamson, Jordan, 2021. "Agglomeration and the extent of the market: Theory and experiment on spatially coordinated exchange," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 838-850.

    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. Maria Bigoni & Gabriele Camera & Marco Casari, 2019. "Cooperation among strangers with and without a monetary system," Working Papers 19-01, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    2. Bigoni, Maria & Camera, Gabriele & Casari, Marco, 2020. "Money is more than memory," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 99-115.
    3. Davis, Douglas & Korenok, Oleg & Norman, Peter & Sultanum, Bruno & Wright, Randall, 2022. "Playing with money," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1221-1239.
    4. Jiang, Janet Hua & Puzzello, Daniela & Zhang, Cathy, 2023. "Inflation, Output, and Welfare in the Laboratory," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    5. Ding, Shuze & Puzzello, Daniela, 2020. "Legal restrictions and international currencies: An experimental approach," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    6. John Duffy & Daniela Puzzello, 2011. "Gift Exchange versus Monetary Exchange: Theory and Evidence," Working Paper 449, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Sep 2013.
    7. Janet Hua (duplicate record) Jiang & Peter Norman & Daniela Puzzello & Bruno Sultanum & Randall Wright, 2021. "Is Money Essential? An Experimental Approach," Working Paper 21-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    8. Deck, Cary A. & McCabe, Kevin A. & Porter, David P., 2006. "Why stable fiat money hyperinflates: Results from an experimental economy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 471-486, November.
    9. John Duffy, 2008. "Macroeconomics: A Survey of Laboratory Research," Working Paper 334, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jun 2014.
    10. Anbarci, Nejat & Dutu, Richard & Feltovich, Nick, 2015. "Inflation tax in the lab: a theoretical and experimental study of competitive search equilibrium with inflation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 17-33.
    11. William Luther, 2016. "Mises and the moderns on the inessentiality of money in equilibrium," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 29(1), pages 1-13, March.
    12. Jiang, Janet Hua & Zhang, Cathy, 2018. "Competing currencies in the laboratory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 253-280.
    13. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Lagos, Ricardo & Wright, Randall, 2016. "Introduction to the symposium issue on money and liquidity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-9.
    14. Brocas, Isabelle & Carrillo, Juan D., 2021. "Young children use commodities as an indirect medium of exchange," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 48-61.
    15. Daniela Puzzello & Brit Grosskpof & John Duffy, 2011. "Gift Exchange versus Monetary Exchange: Experimental Evidence," 2011 Meeting Papers 1153, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    16. Deck, Cary A., 2004. "Avoiding hyperinflation: Evidence from a laboratory economy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 147-170, March.
    17. Williamson, Stephen & Wright, Randall, 2010. "New Monetarist Economics: Models," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 2, pages 25-96, Elsevier.
    18. Maria Bigoni & Gabriele Camera & Marco Casari, 2019. "Partners or Strangers? Cooperation, Monetary Trade, and the Choice of Scale of Interaction," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 195-227, May.
    19. Janet Hua Jiang & Cathy Zhang, 2017. "Competing Currencies in the Laboratory," Staff Working Papers 17-53, Bank of Canada.
    20. Gabriele Camera & Cary Deck & David Porter, 2020. "Do economic inequalities affect long-run cooperation and prosperity?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(1), pages 53-83, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    endogenous institutions; macroeconomic experiments; matching; coordination; markets; money;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior

    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:chu:wpaper:19-04. 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: Megan Luetje (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esichus.html .

    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.