Credit and State Theories of Money

In 1913 and 1914, A. Mitchell Innes published a pair of articles that stand as two of the best pieces written in the twentieth century on the nature of money. Only recently rediscovered, these articles are reprinted and analyzed here for the first time. In addition, five new contributions analyze and extend the approach of Innes in a number of directions by including historical, anthropological, sociological, archeological, and economic analyses of the nature of money. The original articles by Innes contained two quite different approaches to money - what might be called the credit approach (later developed in a much less satisfactory manner by J.A. Schumpeter) and the state money approach (also called Chartalist and adopted by J.M. Keynes and by G.F. Knapp). This volume shows how the credit and state money approaches can be integrated to shed light on the origins of money, but more importantly, how they can be used to understand the way the modern money system operates. In addition to the articles by Innes, the volume contains chapters by John Henry, Geoffrey Ingham, Michael Hudson, Geoffrey Gardiner, and L. Randall Wray. An introduction by L. Randall Wray and Stephanie Bell provides an overview and a short biography of Innes. This authoritative collection of papers is a must-read for economists, policymakers and students interested in the history of economic thought, monetary policy and economic theory.