This chapter summarizes the case for considering money as a legal institution. The Western liberal tradition, represented here by John Locke’s iconic account of money, describes money as an item that emerged from barter before the state existed. Considered as an historical practice, money is...

The modern approach to the market as a place with autonomy depends on a certain view of money. According to that view, money is a neutral technology that expresses individual choices made about real goods and services. But the controversies over money that regularly arise in political...

In this paper we argue that, in substance, the Quantitative Easing (QE) programmes introduced by central banks around the world amount to monetary financing of government deficits. As such, these programmes are unlawful under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). However,...

The recent collapse of the Argentine currency board raises new questions about the desirability of formal fixed exchange rate regimes in modern developing economies. This paper examines the impact of dollarized liabilities with potential default for a currency board with costly abandonment. We...

Whereas some central bank derivatives and other contingent liabilities arise from anomalous circumstances, there are a number of positive reasons that explain their popularity. After analyzing the rationale for these operations, we stress that most of these operations, being off-balance sheet,...

Money norms present a fundamental contradiction. Norms embody the social sphere, a system of internalized values, unwritten rules, and shared expectations that informally govern human behavior. Money, on the other hand, evokes the economic sphere of markets, prices, and incentives. Existing...