Friedrich Hayek is often credited with the resurgence of interest in alternative monetary systems. His own proposal, however, received sharp criticism from Milton Friedman, Stanley Fischer, and others at the outset and never gained much support among academic economists or the wider population....

The case of the Somali shilling defies the historical view that sovereign powers (i.e., legal tender status, public receivability) are necessary to explain the acceptance of fiat money at a positive value. Following the Somali state’s collapse in 1991, irredeemable paper shillings have...

An island nation in north-western Europe, the Republic of Ireland is one of the highest income countries in the world. According to the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook Database, Ireland is among the ten wealthiest countries in the world as measured by gross domestic...

The authors offer perspective on the world financial crisis. Specifically, they claim it was a perfect storm of policy errors that caused the housing bubble and then perpetuated the recovery period into an over-extended recession

We maintain that the crypto-currency bitcoin is a practical application of what is termed “memory” in the monetary economics literature. After reviewing the theoretical literature on money and memory, we offer a brief overview of the bitcoin protocol and argue that, like memory, bitcoin...

What role does government play in determining the medium of exchange? Economists weighing in on the issue typically espouse one of two views. State theorists credit government with the emergence and continued acceptance of commonly accepted media of exchange. In contrast, spontaneous order...

The compelling case offered by Austrians regarding the recent economic downturn has no doubt encouraged many to take a closer look at the broader Austrian perspective. Similarly, the jobless recovery has prompted some soul searching in labor economics. We briefly review the history and...