MONEY AND ITS ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FUNCTIONS

Paper prepared for the conference of the International Atlantic Economic Society under the auspices of the Boltzmann Institute 2 This essay tries to put Simmel=s Theory of Money into the context of current discussions in economics concerning money. The essay has three parts. Part I looks at the contribution of Georg Simmel in its context, and offers remarks about the changing structure of economics as a discipline composed of many different sub-disciplines. It is argued that Simmel is able to transcend sub-disciplinary borders, and to great benefit for today=s scholar. Secondly, a recent contribution to monetary economics is explained in transactions and property rights terms, since that is the only way to comprehend it and integrate it into the main stream of scholarly discourse, although the contribution has been made more in the context of post-Keynesian economics. Again, it appears that Simmel=s approach of transgressing inner disciplinary borders has merits even today. Thirdly, the perplexing phenomenon of European monetary integration is looked at with a similar perspective in mind. Here, the unifying concept is not monetary economics but constitutional political economy as the main cause to explain the peculiar features of European monetary integration