A model of the beginnings of coinage in antiquity
本文构建了一个模型，整合考古学和钱币学的最新进展，分析公元前5世纪前爱奥尼亚、吕底亚和希腊地区钱币的诞生，发现早期钱币并不高利润，政府为推广钱币承担了高昂成本，以降低自身交易成本。
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. This paper provides a model of the birth of coinage that brings these advances into a broad analysis of the subject-matter. It pulls together many factors that are often treated separately. In addition, the model yields one important new result. Contrary to popular assumption, early coinage was not highly profitable. 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. Their willingness to bear this cost must have reflected a political strategy of promoting coinage. Such a political strategy would also be easy to explain. 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.