Introduction

The aim of this book is to provide an updated analysis of the way money and monetary payments have been considered by the main contributors to the history of economic thought: from the Classics to the Neoclassics, from John Maynard Keynes to Bernard Schmitt. Other authors are taken into consideration insofar as they provide useful insights for the building of a macroeconomic theory that can explain the nature of bank money and the systems of national and international payments. Even though our concerns are clearly circumscribed to the field of monetary macroeconomics, the reader will find that the implications of our analysis encompass the entire field of macroeconomic theory.