Creation Stories: Myths About the Origins of Money

68 Pages Posted: 17 Apr 2013 Last revised: 30 Jul 2013

Date Written: July 30, 2013

Abstract

A myth about the origins of money has long organized modern approaches to the medium. According to that creation story, money is the natural product of human exchange. It can be analogized to a commodity like silver that comes to hand out of the decentralized activity of trading or a convention like language that arises out of a consensus about the value of an item. But if we consider clues about money’s origins and extrapolate from its continuing practice, another story comes into focus. It suggests that money is a constitutional project, a mode of governance for a material world. Money is a means of mobilizing resources across a collective, one created when people advance in-kind value to a stakeholder in return for a unit that represents that advance. The process both entails material value – the advance to the stakeholder is real – and converts it into a form that everyone else recognizes – the advance holds independent value because it offers a countable measure that can be transferred to make final payments. Money creation tied to a fiscal backbone can be expanded in response to the demand for cash: that practice accords both with modern economic theory and the English medieval history that furnishes the setting here. In contrast to the dominating myths about money, the “stakeholder” creation story explains how each of money’s functions is institutionalized and how that activity shapes “the market” that is made by money.

Keywords: money, definitions of money, history of money, money creation

JEL Classification: A12, B22, B25, E4, E42, K00, K3, N1, Z1

Suggested Citation

Desan, Christine A., Creation Stories: Myths About the Origins of Money (July 30, 2013). Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 13-20, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2252074 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2252074

Christine A. Desan (Contact Author)

Harvard Law School ( email )

1575 Massachusetts
Hauser 406
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

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