Workshop at Banque de France: "Money as A Value System"

Anders Ögren at Economic History, Uppsala Unviersity is one of the organisers for this workshop in Paris.

Economics textbooks often attribute the existence of money to the absence of a double coincidence of needs and proceed by attributing three functions to money: means of payment, unit of account, and store of value. A common feature of this view is that it focuses on the function of money and explains it in terms of its utility and convenience. This explanation can be defined as the "functional view" of money, because it explains money in terms of its functions. This view can be traced back to Aristotle and Adam Smith and has been reinforced by economists such as Stanley Jevons and Carl Menger. This view has been criticized for being too narrow or lacking historical foundation. Indeed, as Keynes points out, we don't know when or how money appeared, largely because we lack a conceptual definition of money. We can date the appearance of means of payment, but as we know, these are only one of the manifestations of money. Recent studies on the theory of money seek new insights into money, beyond simple functions.

The workshop will be hybrid with in-person and online, and the working language will be English. We will discuss the outline of the project, the research interests of participants, and the direction of future collaboration. It is opened to interested scholars and students.