Scott Sumner (and similarly Kevin Dowd) proposes to have the central bank write futures contracts on the Consumer Price Index, and automatically adjust the money stock in response to the public's net position in such contracts, as a way of improving the precision and credibility of monetary...

The institutional features of models of unregulated monetary systems have often been arbitrarily and implausibly assumed. This pap er instead provides realistic grounding for important features by con structing a logical evolutionary account of free banking. Sophisticat ed and orderly...

As an alternative to market failure explanations, the authors draw on theory and historical evidence to argue that fiscal considerations explain the roles governments typically play in producing and regulating money. Public monopoly production of coins and banknotes, substitution of fiat for...

Brian L. Goff, William F. Shughart, and Robert D. Tollison (1997) attribute the American League's higher hit-batsman rate since 1973 to moral hazard: pitchers who no longer bat no longer face retaliation. The authors argue that retaliation is more efficiently directed at sluggers than at...

Some economists believe that the competitive survival of noninterest-bearing currency--the absence of price competition from markets for stored-value cards, banknotes, and token coins--implies a waste of resources on nonprice competition. The authors argue to the contrary that market forces...

The legal restrictions theory of money, developed by Neil Wallace and others, implies that all noncommodity currency would be interest bear ing under laissez faire (if the interest rate on bonds is positive). This note cites historical evidence to the contrary. It then analyzes the source of the...