Representative money or receipt money is any medium of exchange, physical or digital, that represents something of value, but has little or no value of its own (intrinsic value). Unlike some forms of fiat money (which may have no commodity backing), genuine representative money must have something of intrinsic value supporting the face value.
More specifically, the term representative money has been used variously to mean:
In economics, a medium of exchange is any item that is widely acceptable in exchange for goods and services. In modern economies, the most commonly used medium of exchange is currency. Most forms of money are categorised as mediums of exchange, including commodity money, representative money, cryptocurrency, and most commonly fiat money. Representative and fiat money most widely exist in digital form as well as physical tokens, for example coins and notes.
The origin of "mediums of exchange" in human societies is assumed by economists, such as William Stanley Jevons, to have arisen in antiquity as awareness grew of the limitations of barter. The form of the "medium of exchange" follows that of a token, which has been further refined as money. A "medium of exchange" is considered one of the functions of money. The exchange acts as an intermediary instrument as the use can be to acquire any good or service and avoids the limitations of barter; where what one wants has to be matched with what the other has to offer. However, there is little evidence of a pre-monetary society in which barter is the primary mode of exchange;instead, such societies operated largely along the principles of gift economy and debt.
Commodity money is money whose value comes from a commodity of which it is made. Commodity money consists of objects having value or use in themselves (intrinsic value) as well as their value in buying goods.This is in contrast to representative money, which has no intrinsic value but represents something of value such as gold or silver, for which it can be exchanged, and fiat money, which derives its value from having been established as money by government regulation.
Examples of commodities that have been used as media of exchange include precious metals and stones, grain, animal parts (such as beaver pelts), tobacco, fuel, and others. Sometimes several types of commodity money were used together, with fixed relative values, in various commodity valuation or price system economies.
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial relations among 44 countries, including the United States, Canada, Western European countries, and Australia, after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement until the Jamaica Accords in 1976. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent states. The Bretton Woods system required countries to guarantee convertibility of their currencies into U.S. dollars to within 1% of fixed parity rates, with the dollar convertible to gold bullion for foreign governments and central banks at US$35 per troy ounce of fine gold (or 0.88867 gram fine gold per dollar). It also envisioned greater cooperation among countries in order to prevent future competitive devaluations, and thus established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to monitor exchange rates and lend reserve currencies to countries with balance of payments deficits.
Preparing to rebuild the international economic system while World War II was still being fought, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied countries gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, also known as the Bretton Woods Conference. The delegates deliberated from 1 to 22 July 1944, and signed the Bretton Woods agreement on its final day. Setting up a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system, these accords established the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which today is part of the World Bank Group. The United States, which controlled two-thirds of the world's gold, insisted that the Bretton Woods system rest on both gold and the US dollar. Soviet representatives attended the conference but later declined to ratify the final agreements, charging that the institutions they had created were "branches of Wall Street". These organizations became operational in 1945 after a sufficient number of countries had ratified the agreement. According to Barry Eichengreen, the Bretton Woods system operated successfully due to three factors: "low international capital mobility, tight financial regulation, and the dominant economic and financial position of the United States and the dollar."
The history of money is the development over time of systems for the exchange of goods and services. Money is a means of fulfilling these functions indirectly and in general rather than directly, as with barter.
Money may take a physical form as in coins and notes, or may exist as a written or electronic account. It may have intrinsic value (commodity money), be legally exchangeable for something with intrinsic value (representative money), or have only nominal value (fiat money).
Silver certificates are a type of representative money issued between 1878 and 1964 in the United States as part of its circulation of paper currency. They were produced in response to silver agitation by citizens who were angered by the Fourth Coinage Act, which had effectively placed the United States on a gold standard. The certificates were initially redeemable for their face value of silver dollar coins and later (for one year from June 24, 1967, to June 24, 1968) in raw silver bullion. Since 1968 they have been redeemable only in Federal Reserve Notes and are thus obsolete, but still valid legal tender at their face value and thus are still an accepted form of currency.
Large-size silver certificates, generally 1.5 in (38 mm) longer and 0.5 in (13 mm) wider than modern U.S. paper currency, (1878 to 1923) were issued initially in denominations from $10 to $1,000 (in 1878 and 1880) and in 1886 the $1, $2, and $5 were authorized. In 1928, all United States bank notes were re-designed and the size reduced. The small-size silver certificate (1928–1964) was only regularly issued in denominations of $1, $5, and $10. The complete type set below is part of the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
A Treasury Note is a type of short-term debt instrument issued by the United States prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Without the alternatives offered by a federal paper money or a central bank, the U.S. government relied on these instruments for funding during periods of financial stress such as the War of 1812, the Panic of 1837, and the American Civil War. While the Treasury Notes, as issued, were neither legal tender nor representative money, some issues were used as money in lieu of an official federal paper money. However the motivation behind their issuance was always funding federal expenditures rather than the provision of a circulating medium. These notes typically were hand-signed, of large denomination (at least $50), of large dimension (bigger than private banknotes), bore interest, were payable to the order of the owner (whose name was written on the front of the note), and matured in no more than three years – though some issues lacked one or more of these properties. Often they were receivable at face value by the government in payment of taxes and for purchases of publicly owned land, and thus "might to some extent be regarded as paper money." On many issues the interest rate was chosen to make interest calculations particularly easy, paying either 1, 1+1⁄2, or 2 cents per day on a $100 note.
Characteristically, the issues were not extensive and, as it has been observed, "the polite fiction was always maintained that Treasury Notes did not serve as money when, in fact, to a limited extent they did." The value of these notes varied, being worth more or less than par as market conditions fluctuated, and they rapidly disappeared from the financial system after the crisis associated with their issuance had ended.
Gold certificates were issued by the United States Treasury as a form of representative money from 1865 to 1933. While the United States observed a gold standard, the certificates offered a more convenient way to pay in gold than the use of coins. General public ownership of gold certificates was outlawed in 1933 and since then they have been available only to the Federal Reserve Banks, with book-entry certificates replacing the paper form.