Asymmetric Information and Commodity Money: Tickling the Tolerance in Medieval France
研究中世纪法国全国流通商品货币的出现，分析铸币者与使用者之间的信息不对称如何让王室通过罚款机制获取租金，并测量了这些租金的大小。
An important development in Europe was the emergence of nationally circulating commodity money. Asymmetric information between coin producers and users provided rulers with an opportunity to supply a public good: standard universally accepted coins. We describe the development of a sophisticated monetary system (bureaucracy) in medieval France. In the monitoring scheme employed by the crown, fines were levied against private mint masters when coins did not meet the standards. Yet, fineness or quality of the coin was measured in a way favorable to the mint master. We show that this method implicitly encouraged the mint masters to produce low-quality coins in such a way that the crown earned rents, and we measure these rents.