George Friedrich Knapp: Profiled People in Economics and Banking

Executive Summary

• Knapp created the state credit theory of money.

Introduction

Proposed that money was whatever the ruler or government said money was. He considered money to be inseparable from the support of the state. Knapp’s theory of money is based upon social convention — not based upon the inherent value of the currency. This is why his theory is money either identical or nearly identical to that of Giacinto Auriti’s Seignorage Theory of Money.