IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/iuiwop/0973.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Bracteate as Economic Idea and Monetary Instrument

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Although the leaf-thin bracteates are the most fragile coins in monetary history, they were the main coin type for almost two centuries in large parts of medieval Europe. The usefulness of the bracteates can be linked to the contemporary monetary taxation policy. Medieval coins were frequently withdrawn by the coin issuer and re-minted, where people had to pay an exchange fee. Bracteates had several favourable characteristics for such a policy: 1) Low production costs; and 2) various pictures could be displayed given their relatively large diameter, making it easy to distinguish between valid and invalid types. The fragility was not a big problem, since the bracteates would not circulate for a long period. When monetization increased and it became more difficult to handle re-coinage (around 1300), the bracteates lost their function as the principal coin. However, for a further two centuries (1300–1500) they were used as small change to larger denominations.

Suggested Citation

  • Svensson, Roger, 2013. "The Bracteate as Economic Idea and Monetary Instrument," Working Paper Series 973, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0973
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifn.se/wfiles/wp/wp973.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Sussman, Nathan, 1993. "Debasements, Royal Revenues, and Inflation in France During the Hundred Years' War, 1415–1422," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(1), pages 44-70, March.
    3. Svensson, Roger, 2013. "Re-Coinage as a Monetary Tax: Conditions, Consequences and Comparisons with Debasement," Working Paper Series 950, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Svensson, Roger, 2014. "Re-Coinage in Medieval Sweden," Working Paper Series 1040, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    2. Svensson, Roger, 2013. "Re-Coinage as a Monetary Tax: Conditions, Consequences and Comparisons with Debasement," Working Paper Series 950, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    3. Fischer, Christoph, 2016. "Determining global currency bloc equilibria: An empirical strategy based on estimates of anchor currency choice," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 214-238.
    4. Lefebvre, Dominique, 1997. "Euro Internationalization," MPRA Paper 89353, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Luigi Sacco, Pier & Scarpa, Carlo, 2000. "Critical mass effect and restructuring in the transition towards a market economy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 587-608, March.
    6. Anthony M. Endres, 2009. "Currency Competition: A Hayekian Perspective on International Monetary Integration," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(6), pages 1251-1263, September.
    7. Willem H. Buiter, 1999. "The EMU and the NAMU: What is the Case for North American Monetary Union?," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 25(3), pages 285-305, September.
    8. Hefeker, Carsten, 1995. "The political choice and collapse of fixed exchange rates," Discussion Papers, Series II 277, University of Konstanz, Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 178 "Internationalization of the Economy".
    9. John H. Munro, 2009. "Coinage and Monetary Policies in Burgundian Flanders during the late-medieval 'Bullion Famines',. 1384 - 1482," Working Papers tecipa-361, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    10. Marc Flandreau, Kim Oosterlinck, 2011. "Was the Emergence of the International Gold Standard Expected? Melodramatic Evidence from Indian Government Securities," IHEID Working Papers 01-2011, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    11. Thomas Zotter, 1995. "Europäische Währungsunion? Zur Diskussion um optimale Währungsräume Teil l: Die frühen Beiträge und ihre Relevanz für die heutige Diskussion," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 21(3), pages 407-424.
    12. Claudio Borio, 2019. "On money, debt, trust and central banking," BIS Working Papers 763, Bank for International Settlements.
    13. Dr. Robert Oleschak, 2021. "Financial inclusion, technology and their impacts on monetary and fiscal policy: theory and evidence," Working Papers 2021-04, Swiss National Bank.
    14. repec:bof:bofitp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201506101281 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. He, Qing & Korhonen, Iikka & Guo, Junjie & Liu, Fangge, 2016. "The geographic distribution of international currencies and RMB internationalization," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 442-458.
    16. Thomas Zotter, 1995. "Europäische Währungsunion? Zur Diskussion um optimale Währungsräume," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 21(4), pages 555-578.
    17. 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.
    18. Collier, Paul & Gunning, Jan Willem, 1995. "War, peace and private portfolios," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 233-241, February.
    19. Maurice Obstfeld, 1998. "Open‐Economy Macroeconomics: Developments in Theory and Policy," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(1), pages 247-275, March.
    20. William J. Luther, 2018. "Is Bitcoin Intrinsically Worthless?," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 33(Spring 20), pages 31-45.
    21. He, Qing & Korhonen, Iikka & Guo, Junjie & Liu, Fangge, 2016. "The geographic distribution of international currencies and RMB internationalization," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 442-458.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bracteates; Medieval coins; Re-coinage; Short-lived coinage system; Monetization; Monetary taxation policy; Small change;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • N13 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hhs:iuiwop:0973. 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: Elisabeth Gustafsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iuiiise.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.