IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v54y1987i3p499-517..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Theory of Monetary Exchange

Author

Listed:
  • Alfred Lorn Norman

Abstract

The transactions cost for alternative exchange mechanisms for the household exchange problem can be characterized by the computational complexity of the exchange process. The computational complexity for any exchange mechanism is at least nH, where n is the number of goods and H is the number of households. Imposing the conditions of conservation, nonnegativity and quid pro quo results in a command exchange mechanism whose computational complexity is nH. Multiparty barter exchange, formalized using graph theory, has computational complexity equal to the minimum of (nH2, n2H). Introducing an auxiliary good, money, reduces the computational complexity to nH. A problem with decentralized information is demonstrated.

Suggested Citation

  • Alfred Lorn Norman, 1987. "A Theory of Monetary Exchange," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(3), pages 499-517.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:54:y:1987:i:3:p:499-517.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/2297572
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Håkan J. Holm, 2004. "Rights and Decentralized Computation," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2‐3), pages 290-317, May.
    2. Dubey, Pradeep & Sahi, Siddhartha & Shubik, Martin, 2018. "Money as minimal complexity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 432-451.
    3. Dubey, Pradeep & Sahi, Siddhartha & Shubik, Martin, 2018. "Graphical exchange mechanisms," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 452-465.
    4. Gheorghe Săvoiu & Vasile Dinu & Laurenţiu Tăchiciu, 2012. "Romania Foreign Trade in Global Recession, Revealed by the Extended Method of Exchange Rate Indicators," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 14(31), pages 173-194, February.
    5. Kumaraswamy Velupillai, 2003. "Economics and the complexity vision: chimerical partners or elysian adventurers," Department of Economics Working Papers 0307, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    6. Richard B. Goud Jr., 2002. "Inter-Firm Non-Monetary Transactions in Russia: A Literature Review," Development and Comp Systems 0207001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Holm, Hakan J., 1995. "Computational cost of verifying enforceable contracts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 127-140, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:54:y:1987:i:3:p:499-517.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.