The “Control Space” of the State: A Key Element to Address the Nature of Money

Abstract

The academy has traditionally tended to classify the study about money into two approaches that are often considered incompatible: commodity money and debt money. The first one presents money as a commodity that, thanks to its particular characteristics, allows transactions to be carried out in a much more efficient way than the simple barter. The second one considers that money is a type of debt used in a certain institutional context to facilitate transactions, normally issued by one State to distribute the resources produced in the territory over which it exercises its power. In this work, it is argued that these two approaches are not necessarily incompatible and that an analytical tool can be used to detect a common framework and thus better address the nature of money: the “control space” of the State. JEL Classification: E40, E42, E52