IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ysm/wpaper/amz2448.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Economy with Personal Currency: Theory and Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Angerer
  • Juergen Huber
  • Martin Shubik
  • Shyam Sunder

Abstract

Is personal currency issued by participants sufficient to operate an economy efficiently, with no outside or government money? Sahi and Yao (1989) and Sorin (1996) constructed a strategic market game to prove that this is possible. We conduct an experimental game in which each agent issues her personal IOUs, and a costless efficient clearinghouse adjusts the exchange rates among them so the markets always clear. The results suggest that if the information system and clearing are so good as to preclude moral hazard, any form of information asymmetry, and need for trust, the economy operates efficiently at any price level without government money. These conditions cannot reasonably be expected to hold in natural settings. In a second set of treatments when agents have the option of not delivering on their promises, a high enough penalty for non-delivery is necessary to ensure an efficient market; a lower penalty leads to inefficient, even collapsing, markets due to moral hazard.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Angerer & Juergen Huber & Martin Shubik & Shyam Sunder, 2007. "An Economy with Personal Currency: Theory and Evidence," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2448, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Jan 2009.
    • Handle: RePEc:ysm:wpaper:amz2448
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.som.yale.edu/icfpub/publications/2448.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sorin, Sylvain, 1996. "Strategic Market Games with Exchange Rates," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 431-446, May.
    2. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    3. Gode, Dhananjay K & Sunder, Shyam, 1993. "Allocative Efficiency of Markets with Zero-Intelligence Traders: Market as a Partial Substitute for Individual Rationality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(1), pages 119-137, February.
    4. Sahi, Siddhartha & Yao, Shuntian, 1989. "The non-cooperative equilibria of a trading economy with complete markets and consistent prices," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 325-346, September.
    5. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martin Angerer & Juergen Huber & Martin Shubik & Shyam Sunder, 2010. "An economy with personal currency: theory and experimental evidence," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 475-509, October.
    2. Sean M. Collins & R. Mark Isaac, 2012. "Holdout: Existence, Information, and Contingent Contracting," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(4), pages 793-814.
    3. Huber, Juergen & Shubik, Martin & Sunder, Shyam, 2010. "Three minimal market institutions with human and algorithmic agents: Theory and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 403-424, November.
    4. Martin Shubik, 2010. "Innovation and Equilibrium?," Chapters, in: Dimitri B. Papadimitriou & L. Randall Wray (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Hyman Minsky, chapter 8, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Jan Toporowski, 2013. "The Elgar Companion to Hyman Minsky," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(1), pages 175-177, January.
    6. repec:grz:wpsses:2018-01 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Martin Shubik, 2012. "Mathematical Institutional Economics," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1882, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    8. Martin Angerer & Juergen Huber & Martin Shubik & Shyam Sunder, 2007. "An Economy with Personal Currency: Theory and Evidence," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2448, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Jan 2009.
    9. Simeon Schudy & Verena Utikal, 2015. "Does imperfect data privacy stop people from collecting personal health data?," TWI Research Paper Series 98, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.
    10. Friedrich Heinemann & Martin Kocher, 2013. "Tax compliance under tax regime changes," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 20(2), pages 225-246, April.
    11. Menusch Khadjavi, 2018. "Deterrence works for criminals," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 165-178, August.
    12. Ubeda, Paloma, 2014. "The consistency of fairness rules: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 88-100.
    13. Gehrig, Thomas & Güth, Werner & Leví0nský, René & Popova, Vera, 2010. "On the evolution of professional consulting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 113-126, October.
    14. Thommes, Kirsten & Vyrastekova, Jana & Akkerman, Agnes, 2015. "Behavioral spillovers from freeriding in multilevel interactions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 78-87.
    15. Baghdasaryan, Vardan & Iannantuoni, Giovanna & Maggian, Valeria, 2019. "Electoral fraud and voter turnout: An experimental study," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 203-219.
    16. Anke Gerber & Andreas Nicklisch & Stefan Voigt, 2013. "Strategic Choices for Redistribution and the Veil of Ignorance: Theory and Experimental Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 4423, CESifo.
    17. Urs Fischbacher & Simeon Schudy, 2014. "Reciprocity and resistance to comprehensive reform," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 411-428, September.
    18. Diederich, Johannes, 2014. "The Effect of Ambient Noise on Cooperation in Public Good Games," Working Papers 0560, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    19. Simon Gächter & Lingbo Huang & Martin Sefton, 2016. "Combining “real effort” with induced effort costs: the ball-catching task," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(4), pages 687-712, December.
    20. Dickinson, David L. & Masclet, David & Peterle, Emmanuel, 2018. "Discrimination as favoritism: The private benefits and social costs of in-group favoritism in an experimental labor market," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 220-236.
    21. Hauser, Florian & Huber, Jürgen, 2012. "Short-selling constraints as cause for price distortions: An experimental study," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 1279-1298.

    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:ysm:wpaper:amz2448. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/smyalus.html .

    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.