Endogenizing the provision of money: Costs of commodity and fiat monies in relation to the value of trade

► We extend the paradigm of optimization under scarcity to include trading mechanisms. ► A society optimizes over trading mechanisms modeled as strategic market games. ► Costs and surpluses are compared against goods-values using money-metric utilities. ► Fiat and commodity monies differ in their costs and degrees of control over trade. ► They also differ in the locus of political power.