Money – Between Medium of Exchange and Institution

As one of the most debated economic concepts, with the biggest egos caused both in theory and in practice, but also one of the oldest realities, historically speaking, of the human society, it was inevitable that the money be portrayed us in different instances, depending on the emphasis on its functions (medium of exchange, measure of value, tool for preserving value), on the forms it wears, on the content revealed by the analysis of indicators and monetary aggregates (money supply in circulation), on the institutions which regulate it or on the relations that condition or intermediate it. Of all these instances, two stood in the centre of debates and of the theoretical and empirical approaches which animated the economic thinking: money as a medium of exchange and money as an institution.