Adaptive Learning and the Transition to Fiat Money
用搜索理论框架研究适应性学习对货币演化的影响，发现适应性学习阻碍了从非货币状态自愿转向法定货币，并解释了历史上法定货币往往在商品货币和可赎回纸币之后才出现，以及政府常使用强制手段推动转型的现象。
This article explores some implications of adaptive learning for monetary evolution using a search--theoretic framework that allows for media--of--exchange network effects. Adaptive learning precludes any voluntary transition to a fiat standard from a non--monetary state of nature and can account for the historically--observed tendency for fiat monetary standards to emerge only following the prior appearance of commodity money and the widespread employment of redeemable banknotes. Adaptive learning can also account for governments" frequent resort to coercive measures to force a switch to fiat money and for their ability to affect such a switch even when doing so is not Pareto optimal. Copyright Royal Economic Society 2003.