On the Local Interaction of Money and Credit

We study the coexistence of monetary and credit transactions in a model where exchange is decentralized. Agents belong to different locations which are informationally separated. The equilibrium mix of monetary and credit transactions is characterized as a function of the frequency of meetings among agents from different locations, Credit transactions take place only among a small set of 'neighbors.' Monetary trades emerge only if interactions with faraway locations are sufficiently frequent. Even in that case, trades among nearby locations remain non-monetized. (Copyright: Elsevier)