Giacinto Auriti: Profiled People in Economics and Banking

Executive Summary

• Aurtiri performed a test that supported the social credit/seignorage/state credit theory of money.

Introduction

Aurtiri was a proponent of public central banks and a theory of money he called seigniorage, which looks at money from the perspective of law. Seignorage is very similar to George Friedrich Knapp’s theory of money as being whatever the government said money was. He coordinated with a mayor of a city and shopkeepers and performed the experiment to prove his point creating the currency called the Simec.