Law, sovereignty and the monetization of the European economies: a review of Making Money and Money in the Western Legal Tradition

摘要

Making Money and Money in the Western Legal Tradition provide an extensive analysis of the monetary systems of medieval, renaissance and modern Europe. They use an analytical framework that emphasizes the legal, political, and financial aspects of monetary mechanics and show convincingly that monetary systems are made and planned. Modern monetary systems did not emerge from an impersonal process of trial and error driven by market exchanges among free and equal individuals. The unit of account and accompanying monetary instruments have legal and political origins. The emergence and evolution of modern monetary systems since Ancient Mesopotamia is a story of power relations with an authority that aims at redirecting some of the economic output by imposing dues on the population. Post Keynesian readers will approach these books with Keynes?s framework in mind and will be pleased to see that it does hold well against historical evidence.