Sustainable Money

The next generations will not need a money designed for infinite long-term economic growth, but a sustainable money designed for managing limited and fragile common pool resources and able to support sustainable development and environmental protection.

Sustainability studies developed in many areas of research, while in the field of money research there are ongoing studies for the sustainable allocation of financial capitals but not for a sustainable money design, regulation, and functioning.

Sus-Money research will cover this gap providing 1) a new framework for the study of the characteristics, regulation, and functioning of a sustainable money; 2) a classification of the sustainable dimensions of the European experiments of monetary innovation; 3) an empirical study on Chiemgauer complementary currency to assess whether this type of money can support a sustainability transition.

Sus-Money is a novelty in the panorama of the sociology of money, economics, and sustainability studies because, for the first time, money is studied in the light of a general theory of sustainability (related to politics, economics, ecology, and culture) and with a mixed-method research design. The use of the social mechanisms approach is also a novelty in money studies.

Results will provide knowledge useful for the replication of monetary experiments with sustainable aims in different contexts.

Sus-Money will open a new field of research and offer also crucial information for the policy debate for a new sustainable money. The hosting institution is Trier University with the supervision of Prof. Andrea Maurer, an internationally renowned expert in the field of economic sociology and social mechanisms.

The secondment will take place at the Max Planck Institute for Study of Societies in Cologne with the supervision of the director Prof. Jens Beckert, a prominent international scholar on the field of economic sociology and the study of money.