This blog post is a sequel to “Price of a Woman: Economic Rationale behind Marriage Payments in Georgia”. I recently found very interesting data about bride prices in the Georgian highlands and the North Caucasus, which I am now going to share with you.

We all know how inventive (and sometimes devious) the human mind can be in inventing different kinds of mediums of exchange – which we simply call money. Everybody has heard of cigarettes or cowrie shells, used by people in different economic situations as a replacement for all so familiar gold coins or Ben Franklin portraits in green.

Far from being the root of all evil, money is one of the most spectacularly useful human inventions. On par with the technology of a wheel, the technology of money has made civilization as we know it possible. But what kind of technology does money replace?

Central banks are often surrounded by an aura of mystique and the common man on the street seems to have very little understanding not only of what, why, and how exactly a central bank does, but most importantly of how much a central bank actually can do. It is commonly believed that the job of a central bank is to print money, which sounds rather trivial.