What is ‘Hard Money’
Hard money consists of funding by a government or organization that is repetitive, rather than a one-time grant. Examples include ongoing government daycare subsidies or firms that pay annual scholarships to post-secondary students.
2. Describes gold/silver/platinum (bullion) coins. A government that uses a hard money policy backs the value of the currency it uses with a hard, tangible and lasting material that will retain its relative value over time.
Explaining ‘Hard Money’
1. Governments and organizations prefer hard money because it provides a predictable stream of funds.
2. For example, in the early 1900s, the U.S. dollar was backed by the value of gold. Today, most countries use fiat money, which is made legal tender by government decree but has no intrinsic value of its own.
Further Reading
- Wage bargaining, hard money and economic performance: theory and evidence for organized market economies – www.jstor.org [PDF]
- From hard money to branch banking: California Banking in the gold-rush economy – online.ucpress.edu [PDF]
- Unrepresentative information: The case of newspaper reporting on campaign finance – academic.oup.com [PDF]
- Hard Heads, Soft Money? West German Ambivalence about Currency Reform, 1944-1948 – www.jstor.org [PDF]
- Did firms profit from soft money? – www.liebertpub.com [PDF]
- Equifinality in open systems: Explaining the phenomenon of hard money mortgages – search.proquest.com [PDF]
- An empirical comparison of published replication research in accounting, economics, finance, management, and marketing – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
- Micro-finance evangelism,'destitute women', and the hard selling of a new anti-poverty formula – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Between a rock and a hard place: The grand coalition's response to the economic crisis – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
