The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
So much for the theses to be maintained. The detailed proof of these
contentions will best be given in connection with a critical account of
various versions of quantity theory doctrine. Attention will be given in
this summary to the expositions of Nicholson, Mill, Taussig, and
Kemmerer, and very special attention to I. Fisher, though some other
writers will also be taken into account.
CHAPTER VII
DODO-BONES
Must money have value from some source outside its money-functions? It
is a part of the quantity theory that this is unnecessary. I have cited,
in the preceding chapter, Irving Fisher and J. S. Nicholson to this
effect. Nicholson's statement is interesting and picturesque, exhibiting
the quantity theory in all the nakedness of its poverty, and I shall
present it at some length. "For simplicity," to isolate his phenomenon,
he assumes a hypothetical market, in which the following conditions
obtain: (1) No exchanges are to be made unless money (which he assumes
to consist of counters of a certain size made of dodo-bones) actually
passes from hand to hand. No credit or barter. (2) The money is to be
regarded as of no use whatever except to effect exchanges, so that it
will not be withheld for hoarding, _i. e._, will be actually in
circulation. (3) There are ten traders in the market, each with one kind
of commodity and no money, and one trader with all the money (one
hundred pieces), and no commodities. Further, let this moneyed man put
an equal estimation on all the commodities. Now let the market be opened
according to the rules laid down; then all the money will be offered
against all the goods, and, every article being assumed of equal value,
the price given for each article will be ten pieces, and the general
level of prices will be ten. It is perfectly clear that, under these
suppositions, if the amount of money had been one thousand pieces, the
price-level would have been one hundred per article, etc. Under these
very rigid assumptions, then, it is obvious that the value of money
varies exactly and inversely with the amount put into circulation.--The
rapidity of circulation he regards as cooerdinate, in fixing the
price-level, with the volume of money. To illustrate this, he assumes
again his hypothetical market, and "dodo-bones," assuming as before that
one merchant has all the money (one hundred pieces), and that ten have
commodities of equal value. Instead, however, of the merchant with the
money desiring all the commodities equally, he is made to desire only
the whole of that of trader one, who in turn desires the whole of number
two's stock; and so on to the ninth merchant, who wants the commodity of
number ten, _who wants the dodo-bones_. In this case, each article will
be exchanged only once, as formerly, but the money will change hands ten
times, and the price of each article will be one hundred instead of ten.
"We now see that, under these circumstances, with the same quantity of
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