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Coin sizes and payments in commodity money systems

Author

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  • Angela Redish
  • Warren E. Weber

Abstract

Contemporaries, and economic historians, have noted several features of medieval and early modern European monetary systems that are hard to analyze using models of centralized exchange. For example, contemporaries complained of recurrent shortages of small change and argued that an abundance/dearth of money had real effects on exchange. To confront these facts, we build a random matching monetary model with two indivisible coins with different intrinsic values. The model shows that small change shortages can exist in the sense that adding small coins to an economy with only large coins is welfare improving. This effect is amplified by increases in trading opportunities. Further, changes in the quantity of monetary metals affect the real economy and the amount of exchange as well as the optimal denomination size. Finally, the model shows that replacing full-bodied small coins with tokens is not necessarily welfare improving.

Suggested Citation

  • Angela Redish & Warren E. Weber, 2008. "Coin sizes and payments in commodity money systems," Staff Report 416, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmsr:416
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    Cited by:

    1. Jin, Gu & Zhu, Tao, 2019. "Debasements and Small Coins: An Untold Story of Commodity Money," MPRA Paper 93057, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. 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.
    3. Farley Grubb, 2025. "A transaction-cost model of chronic specie scarcity and the evolution of monetary structures in constrained colonial economies," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 19(3), pages 661-688, September.
    4. Angela Redish & Warren E. Weber, 2011. "A model of commodity money with minting and melting," Staff Report 460, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    5. Farley Grubb, 2012. "Chronic Specie Scarcity and Efficient Barter: The Problem of Maintaining an Outside Money Supply in British Colonial America ," Working Papers 12-08, University of Delaware, Department of Economics.
    6. Fischer, Andreas M., 2014. "Immigration And Large Banknotes," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 899-919, June.
    7. Bignon, Vincent & Dutu, Richard, 2017. "Coin Assaying And Commodity Money," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(6), pages 1305-1335, September.
    8. Allan Hernandez-Chanto, 2020. "The extrinsic value of low-denomination money holdings," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(2), pages 263-280, October.
    9. 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.
    10. Lu, Bofan & Lan, RiXu & Chen, Chuanqi & Zhang, Guokun, 2024. "Modeling analysis framework for metallic currency system," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(PB).
    11. Young Sik Kim & Manjong Lee, 2012. "Return on Commodity Money, Small Change Problems, and Fiat Money," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44, pages 533-549, March.
    12. 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.

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