The development of non-monetary means of payment

This paper develops a model to investigate the private enforcement of non-monetary inter-firm payments in Russia during the 1990s. Since acceptability of means of payment can have a self-reinforcing nature, the dominance of non-monetary means of payment over money in Russia might have been a result of the driving forces of the demonetiziation equilibrium. We propose a very simple search model to explore acceptability of means of payment different from legal tender - fiat money, commodity money, and trade credit. In each case, we show that monetization through the proposed means of payment is always a possible trade pattern.