Credit and State Theories of Money

Book Description
In 1913 and 1914, A. Mitchell Innes published a pair of articles that stand as two of the best pieces written in the twentieth century on the nature of money. Only recently rediscovered, these articles are reprinted here for the first time. In addition, five new contributions analyze and extend the approach of Innes in a number of directions by including historical, anthropological, sociological, archeological, and economic analyses of the nature of money. The original articles by Innes contained two quite different approaches to money - what might be called the credit approach (later developed in a much less satisfactory manner by J.A. Schumpeter) and the state money approach (also called Chartalist and adopted by J.M. Keynes and by G.F. Knapp). This volume shows how the credit and state money approaches can be integrated to shed light on the origins of money, but more importantly, how they can be used to understand the way the modern money system operates. In addition to the articles by Innes, the volume contains chapters by John Henry, Geoffrey Ingham, Michael Hudson, Geoffrey Gardiner, and L. Randall Wray. An introduction by L. Randall Wray and Stephanie Bell provides an overview and a short biography of Innes.

About the Author
Edited by L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics and Research Director, Center for Full Employment and Price Stability, University of Missouri, Kansas City and a Senior Scholar, The Levy Economics Institute, Bard College


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A "rather obscure functionary in Her Majesty's Foreign Service," in the words of editor Wray (economic, U. of Missouri), A. Mitchell Innes contributed two important articles on monetary history and theory (in 1913 and 1914) that subsequently disappeared from view until the Post- Keynesians began to revisit his ideas on state money three-quarters of a century later. Wray reprints those two articles in this volume, following it with five essays relating the analysis of Innes to such topics as the origins of money in ancient Egypt, the evolution of money from three distinct forms of debt, links between the articles of Innes and the approach of Adam Smith, and the nature of money in a capitalist economy. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


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