The Social Origins of Money: The Case of Egypt

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Centrality of Redemption: Linking the State and Credit Theories of Money Through a Financial Approach to Money

Tymoigne

2017

“…Since a system of debts for social transgressions existed in pre-Mesopotamian societies, it is highly likely that the measurements of social obligations (debts) were also used to measure equivalencies between commodities (Ingham 2004: 91). Henry's (2004) analysis of ancient Egypt also bridges the first two accounts.…”

Section: Wergildmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 Henry (2004) argues that before societies were able to produce surplus, they had no use for money. Indeed, a substantial transformation of social relations from egalitarian tribal society to one that is stratified and hierarchical was needed before money emerged.…”

Section: Ancient Egyptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Once agricultural developments generated economic surplus, taxation was used by authorities as a method of transferring part of that surplus (the real resources) from the population to the palaces. The central authority (the king) levied taxes on the population and determined how they could be settled by establishing the unit of account used to denominate all debts to the state (Henry 2004).…”

Section: Ancient Egyptmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Money, Power, and Monetary Regimes

Tcherneva

2016

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in March 2016The Levy Economics Institute Working Paper Collection presents research in progress by Levy Institute scholars and conference participants. The purpose of the series is to disseminate ideas to and elicit comments from academics and professionals.Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, founded in 1986, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independently funded research organization devoted to public service. Through scholarship and economic research it generates viable, effective public policy responses to important economic problems that profoundly affect the quality of life in the United States and abroad. 1 ABSTRACT Money, in this paper, is defined as a power relationship of a specific kind, a stratified social debt relationship, measured in a unit of account determined by some authority. A brief historical examination reveals its evolving nature in the process of social provisioning. Money not only predates markets and real exchange as understood in mainstream economics but also emerges as a social mechanism of distribution, usually by some authority of power (be it an ancient religious authority, a king, a colonial power, a modern nation state, or a monetary union). Money, it can be said, is a "creature of the state" that has played a key role in the transfer of real resources between parties and the distribution of economic surplus.In modern capitalist economies, the currency is also a simple public monopoly. As long as money has existed, someone has tried to tamper with its value. A history of counterfeiting, as well as that of independence from colonial and economic rule, is another way of telling the history of "money as a creature of the state." This historical understanding of the origins and nature of money illuminates the economic possibilities under different institutional monetary arrangements in the modern world. We consider the so-called modern "sovereign" and "nonsovereign" monetary regimes (including freely floating currencies, currency pegs, currency boards, dollarized nations, and monetary unions) to examine the available policy space in each case for pursuing domestic policy objectives.

“…(Hudson 2000(Hudson , 2004Hudson and Wunsch 2004;Henry 2004). Those monetary systems, however, also provide additional insights into understanding the difference between a recording system and a monetary system.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

An Inquiry into the Nature of Money: An Alternative to the Functional Approach

Tymoigne

2006

The paper argues that the functional approach of money does not provide a good method to study monetary history and monetary mechanisms. An alternative approach is developed and illustrated by analyzing the role of tobacco and cowry shells in past monetary systems. It is shown that any monetary system has specific properties that most students of money do not take into account when theorizing about money or analyzing its history. This leads them to miss some important points, and to see monetary systems where none exist. Hence, one can doubt some of the past research on the subject, at least until further investigation is conducted that is based, not on what we think "money" is, but on what its essential properties are. By comprehending what the main characteristics of a monetary system are, one is able to improve regulation of the system and get some insights into the financial mechanisms of sovereign governments. JEL Classification: E42