ABSTRACT
The past two decades have seen the flourishing of a complex body of contributions in Post Keynesian economics, investigating the nature and roles of money in modern economies. The basic principle of these contributions is the idea that money has the nature of a debit-credit relationship, and it fulfils the need for a standard of value in which contractual obligations for the organisation of production and exchange activities are made (Dow and Smithin 1999: 77, also Laidler 1997: 1213-1214). As was discussed in Chapter 5, the roles of money as a final means of payment and as a store of wealth are then derived from this function on the hypothesis that economic agents interact in an environment subject to uncertainty (see Table 5.1 above).
