Money is more than memory
- Impersonal exchange is the hallmark of an advanced society. One key institution for impersonal exchange is money, which economic theory considers just a primitive arrangement for monitoring past conduct in society. If so, then a public record of past actions — or memory — supersedes the function performed by money. This intriguing theoretical postulate remains untested. In an experiment, we show that the suggested functional equality between money and memory does not translate into an empirical equivalence. Monetary systems perform a richer set of functions than just revealing past behaviors, which proves to be crucial in promoting large-scale cooperation.
| Author: | Maria Bigoni, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-356109 |
| URL: | http://ssrn.com/abstract=2527879 |
| Parent Title (English): | Center for Financial Studies (Frankfurt am Main): CFS working paper series ; No. 496 |
| Series (Serial Number): | CFS working paper series (496) |
| Publisher: | Center for Financial Studies |
| Place of publication: | Frankfurt, M. |
| Document Type: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Year of Completion: | 2014 |
| Year of first Publication: | 2014 |
| Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
| Release Date: | 2014/11/25 |
| Tag: | cooperation; experiments; intertemporal trade; social dilemmas; social norm |
| Issue: | October 27, 2014 |
| Page Number: | 39 |
| HeBIS-PPN: | 351114335 |
| Institutes: | Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Wirtschaftswissenschaften |
| Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Center for Financial Studies (CFS) | |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft |
| Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
| Licence (German): |  Deutsches Urheberrecht |
