It had to happen, sooner or later: money and finance are the most highly visible among the many topics of interest to economists. Since I am an economist, and easily accessible through this blog and my social media presence, Wired’s Fabio Deotto asked me for a comment on a piece of financial news: apparently Facebook is considering bringing Credits, the virtual currency used for buying Facebook apps, to the wider world as a universal means of payment. Is it possible to leverage Facebook’s 500+ million users to launch a new global currency and revolutionize the world of finance?
In the best tradition of economics, my answer was that the question is wrong, for many reasons: there are already dozens of virtual currencies that work quite well but did not revolutionize anything; currencies need to be aggressively backed by reserves and open market operations, or they’ll depreciate; credit card companies have already in place globally accepted virtual money operations with many more users than Facebook — only in the USA there were 1.3 billion credit cards in 2006 (the full article, in Italian, is here. But the real answer is that I know nothing about finance, so I recommended that Fabio talk to a real money expert.
This made me realize that not knowing anything about finance is a bad idea for an economist as of 2010. The rising tide of social innovation contains a lot of financial innovation: just think of internet-based microlending agency Kiva; of Italian “community lending” platform Del community lending dell’italiana Prestiamoci; of crowdfunding services for the arts; of Solidarity Purchasing Groups, another Italian invention (yes, Italians, seem to be right on the frontier of social financial innovation). My conclusion: time to go back to studying money. Money is difficult, counterintuitive: its hard to figure out just what it is and where it draws its magical powers to get us the things we need. Can anybody suggest a book to start from? Rigorous, but starting from the basics, ideally with a historic approach? I tried reading Niall ferguson’s The Ascent of Money, but that’s maybe not advanced enough. Thanks in advance for any suggestions you might pass along!
Ho appena letto “Il dono ai tempi di Internet” (M.Aime,A.Cossetta, Einaudi) e viene citato il libro del sociologo di inizio ‘900 Georg Simmel “La filosofia del denaro” ; dello stesso autore “Il denaro nella cultura moderna”.
In tema di economia e finanza mi ritengo abbastanza ignorante (e basterà forse la presente segnalazione a confermarlo); dagli abissi della mia ignoranza mi sento però di suggerire alcuni approfondimenti tra la questione del signoraggio ed i suoi legami con la finanza ed il potere delle banche centrali. Su Wikipedia la voce “signoraggio” è trattata nelle sue molteplici accezioni con dovizia di particolari e fior fior di formule matematiche a me inintellegibili; segue anche una ricca bibliografia sull’argomento.
Federico Bo sopra mi ha ricordato che il libro di Simmel è uno di quelli che avrei voluto leggere da sempre (solo rubricherei Simmel in primo luogo come filosofo e sociologo, non solo per pedanteria 😉 — uno degli ultimi grandi maestri della tradizione tedesca bla bla). Però forse il nostro qui cerca una cosa diversa o più recente… Mi ronza in testa per es. uno o più titoli di Pier… Dacrema (scusa non ricordo il nome proprio), di cui avevo pure sentito una presentazione, ma non li ho e non li ho mai letti.