Understanding money's nature as political, institutional, and material answers today's big money questions. Money remains a foundational question of social theory. What is money? Why does something so insubstantial have value? How do money systems make promises function like valuable things? Why...

This paper reexamines the role of open market operations for short-run effects of monetary policy. Money demand is induced by a cash constraint, while the central bank supplies money exclusively in exchange for securities, discounted with a short-run nominal interest rate. We consider a legal...