Money is an economic institution that functions as a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value, allowing goods and services to be traded without the constraints of direct barter. Historical forms of money have included commodity money such as precious metals, shells and livestock, later giving way to coinage, paper currency issued by state authorities, and modern electronic and digital forms of money. As a social institution, money underpins virtually all market economies and requires a shared social trust in its value, typically backed by government authority, custom, or, in earlier periods, the intrinsic worth of the material from which it was made.
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Barter, direct exchange of goods without a common medium, is conventionally treated as the economic stage that monetary exchange historically supplanted, though the two systems have long coexisted.
A central bank core function is control over the money supply, typically holding the exclusive legal authority to issue a country currency.
Stock exchanges function as centralized markets for converting monetary capital into ownership claims and back again.
Tabu, the shell-string currency of the Tolai people of New Britain, functioned as a recognized medium of exchange and store of value, a documented form of money.
Zelizer The Social Meaning of Money showed how people earmark and moralize money differently depending on its social source and purpose, resisting economic theory of money as pure fungibility.
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