Money

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1819853969

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-207464

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cannan, Edwin http://d-nb.info/gnd/118666916

Title:: Money

Edition:: 6. ed.

Place of publication:: [London]

Publisher:: King

Year of publication:: 1929

Scope:: XII, 120 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part I. General principles

Collection:: Economics Books

32 MONEY is of no importance whatever except in so far as it prevents a spiteful debtor from playing an occasional “ nasty trick ”’ on his creditor by paying him a large sum in these coins.! If they had not been legal tender at all under the law of 1816, they would have been generally accepted just as much as they are. If they had been legal tender for any amount, they would not have been tendered for large amounts any more than they are: in fact silver is seldom tendered for amounts above gs. 113d., which is less than a quarter of the legal maximum, and bronze is seldom tendered for sums above 53d., which is less than half the legal maximum. The law of legal tender has nothing to do with the value of the silver and the bronze coins. They are maintained at the fixed ratios, 20 shillings, and so on, to the pound sterling simply by sufficiency of demand coupled with adequate limitation of supply. When there is a demand for a thing it will have a value until the supply becomes great enough to reduce its marginal utility to nil : what value it will have depends, given the particular elasticity of the demand, upon the magnitude of the supply. The value of the silver and bronze coins of the United Kingdom is kept at the intended ratio because the Government, exercising an absolute monopoly of the manufacture of the only known convenient media of exchange for small transactions, metallic coins, supplies them only in the limited quantity appropriate to that ratio. To make this quite clear we need only consider what would have been the result of insufficient demand or excessive supply. 1 But John Leech’s bus conductor who gave the tiresome 51d lady 4s. 10d. in coppers was quite within his rights. She should have tendered 2d.. not asked for change for a five shilling piece.

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