Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics

Money or Money Substitutes?: Implications of Selgin’s Small Change Challenge

The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics
Downloads

Volume 14, Number 2; Summer 2011

 

Selgin (2009) questions the practicality of 100 percent reserve requirements applied to small change. He interprets the private coinage of small change in 18th century England as embodying fiduciary media and concludes that requiring 100 percent reserves would have led to very high costs. This paper provides an alternative interpretation of the private coinage episode in England as embodying money itself, not fiduciary media, and uses historical details in Selgin (2008) as support of that interpretation. This leads to a discussion of the Misesian typology of money and his distinction between money and money substitutes.

CITE THIS ARTICLE

Nair, Malavika. “Money or Money Substitutes? Implications of Selgin’s Small Change Challenge.” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 14, No. 2; (Summer 2011): 143-157.

All Rights Reserved ©
What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. 

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Become a Member
Mises Institute