The Massachusetts currency of 1690 was the first inconvertible paper money to be supported solely by a legal tender law. The circumstances that led to its creation exceed the typical story of wartime specie shortage. Due to temporary political constraints of that turbulent period, the currency...

We consider an environment where the general equilibrium assumption that every agent buys and sells simultaneously is relaxed. We show that fiat money can implement a Pareto optimal allocation only if taxes are type-specific. We then consider intermediated money by assuming that financial...

This paper studies bank runs in a model with coexistence of fiat money and private money. When fiat money is the only medium of exchange, there exist a bank run equilibrium and an equilibrium that achieves the optimal risk sharing. In contrast, when private money is also a medium of exchange,...

A government can promote the use of an object as the general medium of exchange by accepting it in tax payments. I prove this old claim in a dynamic model and compare the mechanism to convertibility. The government can often keep its favourite money in circulation even while increasing its...

In reaction to the monetary turmoil created by the financial crisis of September 2008, both legislative and constitutional reforms have been proposed in different Countries to introduce Commodity Money alongside existing National Fiat Currency. A thorough evaluation of the Economic consequences...

We develop a generic model of money and liquidity that identifies sources of liquidity bubbles and seignorage rents. We provide sufficient conditions under which a swap of monies leaves the equilibrium allocation and price system unchanged. We apply the equivalence result to the "Chicago Plan,"...

We develop a generic model of money and liquidity that identifies sources of liquidity bubbles and seignorage rents. We provide sufficient conditions under which a swap of monies leaves the equilibrium allocation and price system unchanged. We apply the equivalence result to the "Chicago Plan",...

In this paper I outline – from a practitioner’s as well as from a researcher’s perspective – several of the key developments that took place during the last century in monetary policy. In particular, I describe how the monetary system evolved from gold standard, prevailing throughout...

This works covers peculiarities of formation of Georgian monetary system in XI-XII centuries and their effect on the international financial and economic relations. In this works we have researched the matters of formation of monetary policy of feudal age and their effect on development of...

2003 marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of SUERF. To mark this milestone, some time ago the Council of Management commissioned Professor Jean-Paul Abraham to write a commemorative report. His mandate was not to write a history of SUERF itself (that would be too self-indulgent) but to...