Government in Money

Overview

In lecture five, we consider whether government intervention in monetary services improves public welfare, using concepts like market failure and Pareto efficiency. We evaluate public goods, externalities, and natural monopoly arguments, finding little support for intervention since money is largely rival and excludable, and network effects are typically internalized by markets. The lecture concludes with Friedman’s optimum quantity of money theory, which advocates mild deflation to reduce the cost of holding money and maximize welfare, though such policies have proven impractical in practice.