A model can do better: it permits fitting all the pieces together without privileging one aspect relative to the rest. Discussions of early coinage often put the emphasis on one aspect or another, such as the ability of government to coerce, or market incentives. This makes it a fitting time to propose a general model of the birth of coinage. Yet outside archeology and related sub-disciplines, it is still largely unnoticed that recent advances in the study of early coinage basically resolve the mystery. A fundamental puzzle is that the coinage consisted of electrum, an uncertain mixture of gold and silver. in Ionia or Lydia never cease to arouse curiosity. Introduction The origins of coinage around B.C. As a large payer and recipient of money in the form of precious metals, the government had much to gain from the spread of coinage in order to economize on transaction costs in its own affairs. Such a political strategy would also be easy to explain. Their willingness to bear this cost must have reflected a political strategy of promoting coinage. The Lydian government and the Greek city-states provided an extremely wide array of denominations of coins in a single precious metal at considerable cost. Contrary to popular assumption, early coinage was not highly profitable. In addition, the model yields one important new result. It pulls together many factors that are often treated separately. This paper provides a model of the birth of coinage that brings these advances into a broad analysis of the subject-matter. There have been important advances by archeologists and numismatists in recent decades in the study of the beginnings of coinage in Ionia, Lydia, and Greece before the fifth century B.C.
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