Money and its Functions

Historically, many commodities, ranging from precious metals to cigarettes, have been used as money. In prisoner-of-war camps, cigarettes served as money. In the nineteenth century money was mainly gold and silver coins. These are examples of commodity money, ordinary goods with industrial uses (gold) and consumption uses (cigarettes) which also serve as a medium of exchange. In most modern societies, however, commodities are rarely used as money because they are expensive. Instead, they use fiat money, that is mainly paper currency issued by governments and deposits in checking accounts that are accepted as a means of payments for goods and services. Fiat money is sometimes called token money. By collectively agreeing to use fiat money, society economizes on the scarce resources required to produce money as a medium of exchange. The essential condition for the survival of fiat money is the restriction of the right to supply it. Private production is illegal.

Society enforces the use of fiat money by making it legal tender. The law says it must be accepted as a means of payment.

In modern economies, fiat money is supplemented by IOU (I owe you) money. IOU money is a medium of exchange based on the debt of a private firm or individual. A bank deposit is IOU money because it is a debt of the bank. When you have a bank deposit the bank owes you money. Bank deposits are a medium of exchange because they are generally accepted as payment.

Although the crucial feature of money is its acceptance as the means of paymentor medium of exchange, money has three other functions. It serves as a unit of account, as a store of value, and as a standard of deferred payment. We discuss each of the four functions of money in turn.

Money, the medium of exchange, is used in one-half of almost all exchanges. Workers exchange labour services for money. People buy or sell goods in exchange for money. Money is the medium through which people exchange goods and services.

To see that society benefits from a medium of exchange, imagine a barter economy. A barter economy has no medium of exchange. Goods are traded directly or swapped for other goods. In a barter economy, the seller and the buyer each must want something the other has to offer. Each person is simultaneously a seller and a buyer. There has to be a double coincidence of wants.

Trading is very expensive in a barter economy. People must spend a lot of time and effort finding others with whom they can make mutually satisfactory swaps. The use of money – any commodity generally accepted in payment for goods, services, and debts - makes the trading process simpler and more efficient.

The unit of account is the unit in which prices are quoted and accounts are kept. In Britain prices are quoted in pounds sterling; in America in dollars. It is usually convenient to use the units in which the medium of exchange is measured as the unit of account as well. However there are exceptions. During the rapid German inflation of 1922-23 when prices in marks were changing very quickly, German shopkeepers found it more convenient to use dollars as the unit of account. Prices were quoted in dollars even though payment was made in marks, the German medium of exchange.

Money is a store of value because it can be used to make purchases in the future. To be accepted in exchange, money has to be a store of value. Nobody would accept money as payment for goods supplied today if the money was going to be worthless when they tried to buy goods with it tomorrow. But money is neither the only nor necessarily the best store of value. Houses, stamp collections, and interest-bearing bank accounts all serve as stores of value. Since money pays no interest and its real purchasing power is eroded by inflation, there are almost certainly better ways to store value.

Finally, money serves as a standard of deferred payment or a unit of account over time.