The origin of money from the money-debt approach

• Main Author: Eduardo Garzón Espinosa
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 2019-04-01
• Series: Iberian Journal of the History of Economic Thought
• Subjects: origin of money; commodity; debt; theoretical approach.
• Online Access: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/IJHE/article/view/64117

There are two fundamental approaches to the nature and origin of money that are incompatible with each other: money-commodity and money-debt. The first one has occupied a hegemonic position in the academy —and so outside it— throughout history. On the other hand, the money-debt approach was developed in response to the conventional view, although it currently occupies a marginal place in the academic sphere and is barely known beyond it. Despite its low popularity, the unorthodox outlook of money-debt is much more useful in order to understand the origin and nature of money; and represents a much more accurate analytical framework to monetary phenomena. In this paper a detailed review of the origin of money from this less-known approach is made in order to demonstrate its analytical superiority against the hegemonic approach that suffers from significant theoretical inconsistencies and a lack of empirical support.