Classifying Non-Bank Currency Systems Using Web Data

This paper develops a new classification of non-bank currency systems based on a lexical analysis from French-language web data in order to derive an endogenous typology of monetary projects, based on how these currencies are depicted on the internet. The advantage of this method is that it bypasses problematic issues currently found in the literature to uncover a clear classification of non-bank currency systems from exogenous elements. Our textual corpus consists of 320 web pages, corresponding to 1,210 text pages. We first apply a downward hierarchical clustering (DHC) to our data, which enables us to endogenously derive five different classes and make distinctions, not only between non-bank currency system but between these and the standard monetary system. Next, we perform a similarity analysis. Our results show that all non-bank currency systems define themselves in relation to the standard monetary system, with the exception of Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS). KEYWORDS non-bank money, text mining, web data, downward hierarchical clustering, similarity analysis. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This article was prepared as part of the Research-Action program in Social Innovation financed by the Region of Auvergne. The usual disclaimers apply. We are very grateful to Jerome Blanc and Vincent Mazenod for their support.