ABSTRACT

Money is a core feature in all discussions of economic crisis, as is clear from the debates about the responses of the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States to the 2008 economic crisis.

This volume explores the role of money in economic performance, and focuses on how monetary systems have affected economic crises for the last 4,000 years. Recent events have confirmed that money is only a useful tool in economic exchange if it is trusted, and this is a concept that this text explores in depth. The international panel of experts assembled here offers a long-range perspective, from ancient Assyria to modern societies in Europe, China and the US.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers of economic history, and to anyone who seeks to understand the economic crises of recent decades, and place them in a wider historical context.

chapter |12 pages

Money and trust

chapter |24 pages

Six monetary functions over five millennia

A price theory of monies

chapter |18 pages

Unproductive debt causes crisis

Connecting the history of money to the current crisis

chapter |17 pages

Introducing coinage

Comparing the Greek world, the Near East and China

chapter |18 pages

Incentives and interests

Monetary policy, public debt, and default in Holland, c. 1466–1489 1

chapter |24 pages

Enter the ghost

Cashless payments in the early modern Low Countries, 1500–1800 1

chapter |18 pages

Stagnation is silver, but growth is gold

China’s silver period, circa 1430-1935 1

chapter |28 pages

Confronting financial crises under different monetary regimes

Spain in the Great Depression years 1

chapter |33 pages

Money

The long twentieth century

chapter |20 pages

Conclusion

In search of trust