Monetization

3 Key excerpts on "Monetization"

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  eBook - ePub

  Money, Currency and Crisis

  In Search of Trust, 2000 BC to AD 2000

  • R.J. van der Spek, Bas van Leeuwen, R.J. van der Spek, Bas van Leeuwen(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4 Deep Monetization in Eurasia in the long run1

  Jan Lucassen Questions and concepts

  This chapter introduces a comparative method to measure deep ­Monetization levels (DMLs) across time and space. Originally based on a case study for the Netherlands (1200–1940), its results are tested here for several countries in Eurasia in roughly the same time span. Why study Monetization, and in particular deep Monetization? Monetization, i.e. the increase in the use of currencies as a means of exchange in a society may be regarded as the result of a demand for and supply of artefacts, such as coins and paper money. Monetary history is predominantly concerned with its supply side, and more especially with either the total sums involved (e.g. mass inflation) or with the big denominations: paper money, gold coins (the gold standard being one example), and large-denomination silver coins (with the flow of Spanish silver from the Americas).

  Here I concentrate on the demand side, and more especially on the small denominations – fabricated, as a rule, from base metal. That is precisely the type of currency used by the common man, i.e. many more social actors are directly involved in the use of small change than in that of higher denominations. Therefore, this aspect of monetary history is interesting for scholars wishing to understand the role of social relations in determining demand, but also in understanding reactions to an inadequate supply of small change. As will be demonstrated, these social aspects of monetary history are particularly promising for the study of long-term trends in social and economic history across Eurasia. Similarities and differences across time and space point to converging and diverging overall trends.

  A key role of currencies is to serve as a means of exchange, i.e. in return for goods or for services.

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  Structure and Changes of China's Financial System

  • Jie Zhang(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2 Monetization and financial control by the state The economic reform in China not only suggests diversification of property right forms and decentralization of financial resources, but also brings up the process of economic Monetization (the proportion of transactions with the currency as medium in economic activities has been gradually increasing). Economic Monetization alters the cost-benefit structure of financial control by the state. Compared to “internal” distribution of economic surplus through centralized control over the revenues and expenditures, Monetization indicates “external” distribution, for instance, the control and distribution of the economic surplus is mainly realized through transaction. Therefore, Monetization exerts complicated influences over the utility function for a state exposed to the centrally planned economy for the long term. As is known to us, the state, acting as a rational economic agent, pursues both the maximum control over rent and economic surplus and the minimum cost of control, while establishment of the monopoly property right form guarantees realization of this goal. Before the factor of Monetization was introduced, the cost of state control was often considered a constant due to unitary monopoly of the property rights. The currency itself was merely a symbol of value and measurement unit and was neutral in deciding the control cost. The neutral characteristic of the currency was also expected by the state pursuing the monopoly property right structure. As shown in the discussion on functions of state-owned financial arrangements in Chapter 1, Section 4, Point II, the state attempted to reduce the use of cash currencies as the medium to the minimum in economic activities through the two separate currency processes, because the cost of control by the state is the increasing function of the scale of economic activities with the currency as the medium

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  A Cultural History of Money in the Medieval Age

  • Bloomsbury Publishing, Rory Naismith(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Feller, Gramain and Weber 2005 : 78–85).

  Two very different phases should be clearly distinguished within the long period of the Middle Ages. The first period goes from the sixth through the eleventh centuries. Its distinctive characteristics are quite well known, but it should also be characterized by its relation to a currency that was undoubtedly less rare than traditionally believed, as well as to commercial and non-commercial exchanges (Pestell and Ulmchneider 2003 ; Loveluck 2013 ). The second period spanning the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries is precisely the period of the development of commercial exchange and of transformations in a number of economic structures. It was marked by, among other things, the diversification and multiplication of payment methods, and by a more widespread use of the monetary instrument, without that actually being the only method used. In fact, Monetization of the economy was central to this period, even though money did not define every transaction in general.

  To Settle or To Pay? Forms of Payment in the Early Middle Ages

  In the latter half of the twentieth century, the development of studies of the early Middle Ages led to divergent and sometimes contradictory viewpoints. On the one hand, the earliest historiographers claimed that local trade was marginal, and as a consequence currency was not frequently used for everyday purchases. On the other, they insisted on the idea that only long-distance trade had any economic significance and should be considered in the context of the development of the Western world, excluding the possibility that wealth accumulation could be achieved through the production and marketing of goods. From the 1960s onward, a re-evaluation of local trade and a widespread application of perspectives from economic anthropology to the history of the early Middle Ages have considerably altered, though not unified, views on the role of money in economies and societies of the period (Despy 1968 ; Toubert 1983

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