The Home Economics of E-Money: Velocity, Cash Management, and Discount Rates of M-Pesa Users

By Isaac Mbiti and David N. Weil

American Economic Review, May 2013

We study the mobile phone-based money transfer system in Kenya. Based on aggregate data, we estimate that the velocity with which units of e-money are transferred among users is approximately four times per month, and that the average number of transfers ...

Cross of Euros

[Symposium: The Euro]

By Kevin H. O'Rourke and Alan M. Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

The eurozone currently confronts severe short-run macroeconomic adjustment problems and a deficient institutional architecture that has to be reformed in the longer run. Europe's efforts at economic and monetary union are historically unprecedented. How...

Risk Sharing and Transactions Costs: Evidence from Kenya's Mobile Money Revolution

By William Jack and Tavneet Suri

American Economic Review, January 2014

We explore the impact of reduced transaction costs on risk sharing by estimating the effects of a mobile money innovation on consumption. In our panel sample, adoption of the innovation increased from 43 to 70 percent. We find that, while shocks reduce...

The Coordination Value of Monetary Exchange: Experimental Evidence

By Gabriele Camera and Marco Casari

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2014

What institutions can sustain cooperation in groups of strangers? Here we study the role of monetary systems. In an experiment, subjects sometimes needed help and sometimes could incur a cost to help an anonymous counterpart. In the absence of money, the...

Bitcoin: Economics, Technology, and Governance

By Rainer Böhme, Nicolas Christin, Benjamin Edelman, and Tyler Moore

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2015

Bitcoin is an online communication protocol that facilitates the use of a virtual currency, including electronic payments. Bitcoin's rules were designed by engineers with no apparent influence from lawyers or regulators. Bitcoin is built on a transaction ...

Review of Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism by Christine Desan

By William Roberds

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2016

In the eighteenth century, the Bank of England revolutionized money through its large-scale introduction of circulating banknotes. The consequences of this revolution are felt even today. In Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism