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An Economy with Personal Currency: Theory and Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Angerer
  • Juergen Huber
  • Martin Shubik
  • Shyam Sunder

Abstract

Is personal currency issued by participants sufficient to operate an economy efficiently, with no outside or government money? Sahi and Yao (1989) and Sorin (1996) constructed a strategic market game to prove that this is possible. We conduct an experimental game in which each agent issues her personal IOUs, and a costless efficient clearinghouse adjusts the exchange rates among them so the markets always clear. The results suggest that if the information system and clearing are so good as to preclude moral hazard, any form of information asymmetry, and need for trust, the economy operates efficiently at any price level without government money. These conditions cannot reasonably be expected to hold in natural settings. In a second set of treatments when agents have the option of not delivering on their promises, a high enough penalty for non-delivery is necessary to ensure an efficient market; a lower penalty leads to inefficient, even collapsing, markets due to moral hazard.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Angerer & Juergen Huber & Martin Shubik & Shyam Sunder, 2007. "An Economy with Personal Currency: Theory and Evidence," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2448, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Jan 2009.
    • Handle: RePEc:ysm:wpaper:amz2448
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Sorin, Sylvain, 1996. "Strategic Market Games with Exchange Rates," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 431-446, May.
    2. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    3. Gode, Dhananjay K & Sunder, Shyam, 1993. "Allocative Efficiency of Markets with Zero-Intelligence Traders: Market as a Partial Substitute for Individual Rationality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(1), pages 119-137, February.
    4. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Sahi, Siddhartha & Yao, Shuntian, 1989. "The non-cooperative equilibria of a trading economy with complete markets and consistent prices," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 325-346, September.
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