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Objective This study was conducted to determine the presence, type, and rate of parasitic contamination in Iranian currencies. Study design This was a cross-sectional study. Methods Coins and banknotes of different denominations were randomly collected from sellers and markets in Tabriz, Northwest of Iran, for examining parasitic contamination. Results Entamoeba coli and Giardia intestinalis were the most identified species of parasites in this study. Other parasites detected were Cryptosporidium parvum, Ascaris lumbricoides, Entamoeba histolytica, Fasciola hepatica, and Toxocara cati. A high rate of parasitic contamination was found in banknotes compared with coins, and a statistically significant association was found between parasitic contamination and the apparent condition of the currencies. The notes of lower denominations showed the highest contamination rates. The highest parasitic contamination was found in coins and banknotes obtained from public toilet services, butchers, and beggars. Conclusions The findings emphasize the role of circulating coins and banknotes in the risk of pathogenic parasite transmission.

Banknote printing is the industry that has a deep influence on financial operations on market, reflecting the economic performance of governments. Therefore, it is surrounded by a great secrecy even when dealing with production waste and end-of-life products, which are utilized very carefully by controlled combustion or incineration after crushing using special techniques designed to ensure that the waste does not come into possession by third parties. This waste contains significant amounts of cotton, percentage of which sometimes can reach up to 100% of the weight of banknote paper. It is clear that disposal of such waste by simply incinerating it is contrary to the principles of sustainability and preservation of resources. In order to achieve these principles, this research aims to develop a new strategy called “Banknote for Banknote (BFB)” to recover and refine cotton from Banknote waste and later reuse it in the production of banknote paper or reprocess it into cellulose nanocrystals suitable for use in many advanced applications through a sustainable technology. The experiments were performed only on the Banknote Production Waste (BPW) (which is estimated as ˜3% of the total volume of Banknote production) because the end-of-life banknotes are usually contaminated with many substances during the circulation. Some of them can become hazardous to the extent of being contaminated with drugs (e.g. cocaine, etc.); that requires many additional analyses and special treatment. In the developed technology BPW was treated by using five sequential processes that were selected based on the banknote design, structure, need to reach minimum gas emissions and high recovery rate. The technology began from crushing treatment at the Central Bank for safety reasons, then leaching process was used to dissolve the heavy metals from the ink layer (Al, Fe, Ni, etc.) and separate other pigment metal elements (Si, Ti, etc.) in the form of suspended particles, while the dissolution and bleaching stages were employed to dissolve the remaining organic components and purify the cotton substrate. Finally, acid hydrolysis was used to prepare Cellulose nanocrystals with average size 75 nm from the purified cotton. Although the experiments were conducted on Egyptian Banknote, the advanced technology is applicable to all types of cotton based-banknotes with high profitability.

Italian Abstract: Il lavoro presenta una serie mensile dell’indice di Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) per la stampa delle banconote in Banca d’Italia, dal gennaio 2014 al settembre 2020. L’OEE esprime il grado di funzionamento di un sito industriale, misurando in percentuale il rapporto tra il volume di produzione conforme agli standard realizzato in un dato intervallo di tempo e quanto si era pianificato di produrre. Il lavoro evidenzia i progressi registrati nell’indice dopo il riassetto della stamperia a partire dal marzo 2018, nonche la resilienza nello svolgimento dell’attivita nella fase piu recente di emergenza sanitaria. Tramite verifiche econometriche si misura in circa 10 punti percentuali la flessione dell’indice nella fase piu intensa delle trattative che poi ebbero ad esito la riorganizzazione, quantificando cosi un fenomeno ben attestato nella letteratura di organizzazione industriale. English Abstract: In this paper, we present a monthly series of the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) index for the Bank of Italy’s banknote production plant, from January 2014 to September 2020. The OEE index identifies the share of manufacturing time that is truly productive, measured as the ratio between the actual standard-compliant production volume achieved within a given time interval and the planned output for the same period. The paper highlights the increase in the plant’s OEE after the rollout of the reorganization in March 2018, as well as the resilience of the production even during the ongoing health emergency. Based on the results of an econometric exercise, we measure a fall of about 10 percentage points in the index during the negotiations with the trade unions that led to the reorganization, a time of heightened uncertainty. This evidence provides empirical support to the existence of a pattern well known in the industrial organization literature.

Following the implementation of negative policy rates, interest rates on bank deposits reached their historic lows, with values close or equal to zero. This paper investigates the implications of such a new environment for the demand of cash. We find evidence of a discontinuity in the demand of cash when rates on bank deposits fall below 0.1 per cent. Exploiting time, bank and banknote denomination variation, as well as exogenous shocks to cash payments and holdings, our analysis finds that the increase of cash in circulation seems to be mostly driven by transactions demand instead of store-of-value demand.

In this paper, we propose counterfeit banknote detection algorithms using low resolution multispectral images. It has become increasingly difficult to detect professionally produced counterfeit banknotes, so more sophisticated features have had to be implemented in banknotes. However, sensors that are capable of reading these counter-fake features are rather expensive. On the other hand, multispectral images can be used to tackle the counterfeit banknote problem. Recently, multispectral sensors have been developed for ATM applications. We developed efficient counterfeit banknote detection algorithms and the proposed algorithms were tested using 20 different denominations of European Euro (EUR), Indian rupee (INR), and US Dollars (USD). The experimental results show that the proposed methods provided 99.8% classification accuracy for genuine banknotes and 100% detection accuracy for counterfeit banknotes.

Authentic and counterfeit Real banknotes (R$ 50 and R$ 100) were discriminated using near infrared spectroscopy with a portable instrument associated with principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). A total of 11 different regions on the banknotes (corresponding to security elements: puzzle, printing, embossing, microprinting, watermark and holographic marks) were analyzed. PCA was used to highlight patterns in key points for analysis of banknotes samples. From the score plot of the three main components, it was possible to identify the regions with greatest potential to discriminate between authentic and counterfeit banknotes. Then, a PLS-DA model was constructed using only the selected regions: puzzle, embossing and watermark. The PLS-DA model showed excellent discriminatory capacity with accuracy of 100%. Therefore, the use of a portable technique such as near infrared, combined with chemometrics models, allowed the analysis of documents in real time, e.g., in crime scene investigations, being an inexpensive, fast and reproducible analytical method that preserves the integrity of the material.

Banknote counterfeiting can potentially undermine the integrity of a currency, by eroding both public and retailer confidence in cash as a method of payment. To thwart such criminal counterfeiting activity, banknote issuing authorities employ a range of overt and covert technologies, most in the form of banknote security features. The development, selection and deployment of such features, is an ongoing process undertaken jointly between the manufacturers of security features, banknote printers and banknote issuing authorities, i.e. Central Banks. This ongoing process helps maintain the integrity of banknotes as a recognised, safe and secure means of payment. While some counterfeit banknotes are seized by police at the point of production or whilst in storage, others are removed from circulation during banknote sorting operations, as part of the ‘cash cycle’. Counterfeit banknotes which are removed from circulation are inevitably contaminated, in terms of finger marks and DNA acquired during handling by both criminals and non-criminals alike. However, encapsulated DNA recovered from between the layers of a composite banknote, is highly likely to belong to a person involved in the manufacturing process and is therefore of far greater evidential value. Such evidence has the potential to identify the criminals involved in counterfeit note production. This research evaluates the investigative potential of recovering and profiling of such encapsulated DNA, primarily regarding specific counterfeit types. Accordingly, the objective of the research is to establish an innovative and reliable method of extracting and profiling encapsulated DNA from counterfeit banknotes

This paper provides a reassessment of the free-banking history of Switzerland, which included both a period of unfettered competition (1826–1881) and one of strong banknote regulation (1881–1907). Unfettered competition between note-issuing banks gave rise to a fragmented paper-money system, with limited liquidity banknotes. To increase confidence in these notes, the federal government introduced a minimum-reserve requirement and a mutual-conversion rule in 1881. Based on a theoretical model and new empirical evidence, this paper shows that this enhanced regulation came at a cost, as it led to the overissuing of banknotes and an inelastic paper-money supply.

Banknote recognition is an important task in many automatic payment facilities and counting machines. The most popular approach is based on image processing methods in which banknote images are captured by visible light sensors and are classified by denominations and input orientations. There are regions on a banknote image that yield better recognition accuracy than the other areas. There have been few studies on optimal discriminative regions on a banknote image; therefore, we proposed a banknote recognition method to select the discriminative regions on the banknote image captured by a one-dimensional visible light sensor. The proposed method uses genetic algorithm to optimize the similarity mapping result for different classes of banknotes. Experimental results with banknote databases from various countries show that our proposed method results in better accuracies than previous methods with the average recognition accuracies of higher than 99% and small variance among five trials in each type of currency.

The use of counterfeit banknotes increases crime rates and cripples the economy. New countermeasures are required to stop counterfeiters who use advancing technologies with criminal intent. Many countries started adopting polymer banknotes to replace paper notes, as polymer notes are more durable and have better quality. The research on authenticating such banknotes is of much interest to the forensic investigators. Hyperspectral imaging can be employed to build a spectral library of polymer notes, which can then be used for classification to authenticate these notes. This is however not widely reported and has become a research interest in forensic identification. This paper focuses on the use of hyperspectral imaging on polymer notes to build spectral libraries, using a pushbroom hyperspectral imager which has been previously reported. As an initial study, a spectral library will be built from three arbitrarily chosen regions of interest of five circulated genuine polymer notes. Principal component analysis is used for dimension reduction and to convert the information in the spectral library to principal components. A 99% confidence ellipse is formed around the cluster of principal component scores of each class and then used as classification criteria. The potential of the adopted methodology is demonstrated by the classification of the imaged regions as training samples.

Banknote recognition means classifying the currency (coin and paper) to the correct class. In this paper, we developed a dataset for Jordanian currency. After that we applied automatic mobile recognition system using a smartphone on the dataset using scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) algorithm. This is the first attempt, to the best of the authors knowledge, to recognize both coins and paper banknotes on a smartphone using SIFT algorithm. SIFT has been developed to be the most robust and efficient local invariant feature descriptor. Color provides significant information and important values in the object description process and matching tasks. Many objects cannot be classified correctly without their color features. We compared between two approaches colored local invariant feature descriptor (color SIFT approach) and gray image local invariant feature descriptor (gray SIFT approach). The evaluation results show that the color SIFT approach outperforms the gray SIFT approach in terms of processing time and accuracy.

This paper simulates the cash flows and balance sheet of the Bank of Japan (BoJ) before and after the end of Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing (QQE) under various scenarios. The simulations show that the BoJ will record significant accounting losses after the end of QQE, because the yields on Japanese government bonds (JGBs) acquired during QQE will be lower than the interest rate on excess reserves after the end of QQE. These losses are fiscal costs for the consolidated Japanese government, as they correspond to increased interest expenses to the public. The extent of the BoJ's accounting losses depends crucially on the duration of QQE and the interest-rate elasticity of banknote demand.

By adding denominations to their coin and banknote series central banks can increase the efficiency of cash payments. In practice, however, they opt for a denominational structure with a relatively low density. The literature holds that this is because of the production costs involved. To test this proposition, we introduce a per-denomination fixed cost into the matching model of Lee et al. (2005) and parameterize the model with data on the production of US dollar banknotes. Our simulations demonstrate that central banks could increase the density of their currency systems beyond the observed level without the efficiency gains for transactors being dwarfed by the additional production costs for the central bank itself. This suggests that the explanation for the low density rather lies with costs incurred by consumers and merchants - and anticipated by central banks - that are not yet in any of the extant models.

A smart banknote is a physical banknote on a paper or polymer substrate that can communicate with an electronic network. A smart banknote is denominated and has the physical properties of a traditional banknote in size, feel, appearance, and etc. It is not a rigid, plastic card such as may be used in present credit or debit transactions. The purpose of a smart banknote is to act as a hybrid that can function either as a definitive or an electronic instrument, depending upon the immediate need. Such functionality will allow a smart banknote to act as a transitional device between traditional payment systems and electronic and crypto-based payment systems. This paper presents an overview of smart banknotes, including their history to date, their differentiation from paper crypto wallets, and their need to mimic traditional banknotes.

Currency counterfeiting is a serious crime that affects a country's finances. The proposed system will be useful to detect counterfeit banknotes in banking systems. India is facing more serious problems due to the increase in fake notes in the market. To get rid of this problem, various fake note detection methods are available worldwide, but most of them are hardware based and costly. The proposed system focuses on having access to the public to identify counterfeit banknotes. The proposed system can identify the legitimacy of a banknote by checking for specific security features such as watermarks, latent images, security threads, etc. Identification of counterfeit banknotes is done using machine learning techniques. The methodology involves extracting and encoding these security features. Security features are extracted from the input image, feature detection and classification are performed using a support vector machine (SVM). Experimental results shown in the paper shows promising results.

The aim of this paper is to present a methodology on the application of neuroanalysis to the design of banknotes and security features. Traditionally, evaluation of the perception of banknotes is based on explicit personal responses obtained through questionnaires and interviews. The implicit measures refer to methods and techniques capable of capturing people's implicit mental processes. Neuroscience has shown that, in most brain processes regulating emotions, attitudes, behaviours and decisions, human consciousness does not intervene. That is to say, these implicit processes are brain functions that occur automatically and without conscious control. The methodology on neuroanalysis can be applied to the design of banknotes and security features, and used as an effective analysis tool to assess people's cognitive processes, namely: visual interest, attention to certain areas of the banknote, emotions, motivation and the mental load to understand the design and level of stimulation. The proposed neuroanalysis methodology offers a criterion for making decisions about which banknote designs and security features have a more suitable configuration for the public. It is based on the monitoring of conscious processes, using traditional explicit measures, and unconscious processes, using neurometric techniques. The neuroanalysis methodology processes quantifiable neurometric variables obtained from the public when processing events, such as eye movement, sight fixation, facial expression, heart rate variation, skin conductance, etc. A neuroanalysis study is performed with a selected group of people representative of the population for which the design of a banknote or security features is made. In the neurometric study, suitably prepared physical samples are shown to the participants to collect their different neurometric responses, which are then processed to draw conclusions.

This research paper examines whether the European Central Bank (ECB) is entitled de lege lata to issue an electronic equivalent of paper‐based euro banknotes (e‐banknotes) and, if so, under what conditions such e‐banknotes might have legal tender status. To this end, Part 2 sets the stage by discussing the reasons that might motivate or even compel the ECB to issue an e-banknote and by analyzing whether an e‐banknote is a banknote by reference to general principles of law and financial practices. Part 3 examines which monetary policy objectives and tasks could be better fulfilled if an e‐euro were issued or, conversely, whether non‐issuance could in the future impair the fulfillment of the ECB’s mandate. Subsequently, Part 4 analyses the constitutional framework that empowers the ECB, within certain clear limits, to pursue the objectives set. This includes particularly the interpretation of the term ‘banknotes’ in Article 128 TFEU as well as the content and scope of selected basic tasks set out in Article 127 TFEU and mirrored in the Statute of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) and of the ECB. The results are then weighed against the potential interests of third parties that could be affected by an e‐euro. Part 5 proceeds by discussing the design features that a functional equivalent of a paper banknote can and must exhibit in order to meet the previously defined objectives and constitutional limits. Part 6 explores the issue of architecture, i.e. the possible models of issuance. Part 7 concludes.

Here, we use magnetic methods first to quantify the content of strongly magnetic particles of banknotes (US dollars, USD, and British pounds sterling, GBP), and then examine the possibility of their release from handled banknote surfaces. The content of magnetic particles, from magnetic remanence measurements, for the USD and paper GBP banknotes is high; greater, for example, than that in vehicle engine-exhaust emissions, and similar to that for airborne roadside particulate matter (PM). Our magnetic analyses of USD and GBP banknotes, and of the ink pigment widely used in their printing, reveal not only that the banknotes are highly magnetic, but also that strongly magnetic, nano-sized particles are readily and prolifically shed from their surfaces (especially from the USD banknotes). A common practice, prior to increased automation, was for bank tellers to count banknotes by licking a finger to adhere to each successive counted note, and thus speed up the manual counting process. Given the rate of particle shedding reported here, this traditional manual counting procedure must have resulted in prolific transfer of iron-rich nanoparticles both to the fingers and thence to the tongue. We hypothesise that, pre-automation, magnetite and other metal-bearing nanoparticles were repetitively and frequently ingested by bank tellers, and subsequently entered the brain directly via the taste nerve pathway, and/or indirectly via the systemic circulation and the neuroenteric system. This hypothesis may plausibly account for the reported and currently unexplained association between elevated neurodegeneration-related mortality odds ratios and this specific occupation.

There has been a dramatic rise in progressive values imagery on the banknotes of industrialized states over the past few decades. We see this trend as an instance of international norm diffusion and point to two causal mechanisms that have facilitated it: mimesis and professionalism. We hypothesize that national politicians are more subject to the mimetic mechanism, whereas central bank bureaucrats are more subject to the professionalism mechanism. We then probe the value of our theoretical contentions with a case study of the banknotes of the Republic of China, i.e. Taiwan. Using qualitative and quantitative content analysis, we show the convergence of the New Taiwan Dollar with advanced country norms of progressive banknote iconography around the year 2000. Then, using historical process-tracing analysis, we show that this convergence was engineered by national politicians who wanted banknote reform for mimetic and domestic political reasons, and central bank bureaucrats who wanted banknote reform for professional reasons. In short, the changes to these important symbols of national identity were reflections of different state actors' thirst for international belonging.

Counterfeiting of banknotes is a crime and seriously harmful to economy. Examination of the paper, ink and toners used to make counterfeit banknotes can provide useful information to classify and link different cases in which the suspects use the same raw materials. In this paper, 21 paper samples of counterfeit banknotes seized from 13 cases were analyzed by wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence. After measuring the elemental composition in paper semi-quantitatively, the normalized weight percentage data of 10 elements were processed by multivariate statistical methods of cluster analysis and principle component analysis. All these paper samples were mainly classified into 3 groups. Nine separate cases were successfully linked. It is demonstrated that elemental composition measured by XRF is a useful way to compare and classify papers used in different cases.

In order to improve the accuracy of detection of defects in banknote sorting, a new algorithm is proposed to detect cracks and scratches on banknote images. The quaternion wavelet transform and the least squares method are used for the banknote image registration. The features of the defects that are robust to gray intensity changes are constructed using edge information captured by the Kirsch operator. The banknote image is divided into several subzones of fixed size. The level of defect of the banknote image is estimated based on the defective features of each sub-zone. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is robust even with low quality banknote images and can obtain a high recognition rate and high stability. The proposed algorithm has already been used in a practical banknote sorting system. The quaternion wavelet transform is applied to banknote image registration.Defect banknote features are extracted by the proposed edge intensity.New banknote defect detection algorithm based on our QWT is proposed.

November 8, 2016 declaration by Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi that all 500- and 1000-rupee banknotes notes of the Mahatma Gandhi Series would cease being legal tender from midnight 9th November 2016 was greeted with shock and dismay. The pronouncement demonetized the two banknotes. However, India is not the first country to demonetize its currency. Several countries have used the practice due to various reasons. The U.S., Ghana, Nigeria, European Union, Soviet Union, North Korea, and Zimbabwe are some of the countries that have demonetized their currencies. These countries demonetized their currencies due to various reasons. These reasons are almost similar to the reasons as to why India demonetized its currencies. The Indian government claimed that the aims of demonetization were to remove fake currency from circulation, tackle terrorism funding and left-wing extremism, remove black money, create a cashless economy, and to convert the non-formal economy into a formal economy, which would help in expanding the tax base and employment. However, demonetization had several disadvantages. It reduced the level of cash in circulation. The cash crunch was caused by the introduction of the Rs. 2,000 into circulation. This high value of the banknote made it difficult to carry out financial transactions as the transactions became difficult due to unavailability of equivalent change. As such, people could not use it to make small purchases. Demonetization also inconvenienced members of the public as the government only removed certain banknotes from circulation and kept others. It necessitated people to spend a long-time queuing outside banks and cash machines to get new currency. People lost valuable time that they could have spent undertaking other economically productive activities. Demonetization also led to the slowdown of the economic growth of India. It also created an opportunity for people to engage in fraud and corruption. For instance, it provided money changers with an opportunity to change black money into clean money at a fee. Demonetization affected a very small proportion of the assets accumulated through illegal activities. Another disadvantage of demonetization is that it does not control the source of the illegal funds. This paper will provide a background of demonetization and detail its pros and cons.

Between 1900 and 1950, five of Canada’s domestic banks issued bank notes for circulation in the British West Indies. This article is about these Canadian banknotes. It starts with some background on the Canadian participation in the BWI bank sector and the circumstances that led to the issuance of the first Canadian banknotes. We then provide a description of the twelve different series of Canadian banknotes that circulated in the BWI with, where possible, some information on the size of those issues. We also consider aspects of the rivalry between the Canadian banks and the incumbent Colonial Bank (established in the region in 1836) as banknote issuers and the role the colonial authorities played in managing the relationship between them. The article concludes with a description of the events that led to the withdrawal of the notes of commercial banks in 1950 and their replacement with government issues.

In the present manuscript it is reported a study carried out by means of micro-Raman and infrared spectroscopy on banknotes used in Italy during more than 50 years, since 1947 until 2001. For each specimen, three different features of the banknote (serial number, watermark and security mark) were considered and the measurements were repeated on three different banknotes of the same type. Differences were revealed in the paper banknote composition, red color used for the security mark and serial number black printing ink. Then, two certified fakes were analyzed and significant shifts on the main peak of red color pigment were revealed.

This paper shows the result of a study on the extent of cocaine contamination in Real banknotes in circulation in the state of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). A study of the percentage of contaminated banknotes was made, as well as a study on the contamination of banknotes based on different values, and a study of contamination depending on the region where the banknote was collected. The idea of this last study was to verify if the peculiar characteristics of the region of study (in particular, the city of Rio de Janeiro) influence the amount of cocaine in the banknotes. Some regions have higher consumption/drug trafficking of cocaine than others. Also, some contaminated banknotes confiscated directly from drug dealers and users were analyzed. Also, is showed in this paper all the optimization of the available analytical techniques for making the measurements possible.

In this paper, we propose a fast and efficient algorithm to classify multi-national banknote images using size information and multi-template correlation matching. Since different banknotes have different sizes, this information was considered to be an important characteristic. Using the size information, we generated a size map to group the banknotes. Then, we determined the discriminant areas of each banknote that have high correlations among the same kind of banknote and low correlations with different kinds of banknotes. Post-processing was applied to handle degradations such as writing, aging, etc. The algorithm was tested using 55 banknotes of 30 different denominations from five countries: KRW, USD, EUR, CNY, and RUB. The experimental results showed 100% classification accuracy for unsoiled banknotes and 99.8% classification accuracy for soiled banknotes. The average processing time was about 4.83ms per banknote.

Menzies (2004) uses a ‘cohorts approach’ to model banknote printing costs. This paper proposes a ‘generational approach’ that allows for more realistic assumptions concerning currency growth and note replacement. The paper shows that Menzies' claim that the case for polymer banknotes becomes stronger with higher currency demand is an artefact of his model. In most scenarios, the number of notes in circulation does not affect the relative cost effectiveness of paper and polymer; and when it does, the impact goes in the other direction. A second finding is that the ‘note life over unit-cost rule of thumb’ can be misleading.

Trinidad and Tobago executed a surprise demonetization of its largest currency note in December 2019 to address financial crimes. This evaluation of the outcome finds that the exercise was relatively well managed by the authorities within the short time frame established, facilitated by good coordination amongst the banks and widespread public communication. There were some avenues for leakages and sidestepping of the restrictions on conversions, including via an initially unplanned concession allowing low-value exchanges at the Central Bank for all individuals after the banknote was no longer legal tender. Nonetheless, there appears to have been an impact on “black money”, with over 5 per cent of the demonetized notes not being presented for exchange. The early evidence suggests that the exercise affected the demand for cash for transactions and savings, but not digitization. It also contributed valuable information for the detection of tax evasion and money laundering.

In order to improve the performance of the banknote classification, this paper presents a new feature extraction method based on quaternion wavelet transform (QWT). The QWT yields one shift invariant magnitude and three phases based on quaternion algebra. The generalized Gaussian density (GGD) is applied to capture the statistical characteristics of QWT coefficients. The neural network is used as classifier in the framework of banknote classification. Experimental results demonstrate its effectiveness and the proposed method obtains a higher recognition rate in the banknote classification.

This paper explores the relationship between national iconography, banal nationalism and conceptions of the state. It begins by reviewing scholarship on visual culture associated with official products of the state: namely, stamps and money. This reveals a preoccupation with content analysis and a tendency to assume state control over the symbolic content of money (and stamps) without clarifying the nature of design processes, the nature of state involvement in these processes, or how ‘the state’ is being conceptualized. The paper addresses these lacunae, beginning with an examination of approaches to banknote design and clarification of the role of the state in these processes. This analysis reveals that non-state actors and institutions are frequently responsible for this key mechanism of official iconographic representation and this, in turn, supports calls for a reassessment of the concept of the state. After outlining an alternative conception of the state, as an idea that produces ‘state effects’ rather than an empirical entity separate from society, the value of this concept is illustrated by showing how it can explain banknote production in the stateless nation of Scotland. The revelation that commercial banks can be co-constitutive of state effects – things like banknotes, national institutions, iconography and identity – challenges presumptions of a discrete state that controls its own representation and the regulation of society.

One of the most important results of theoretical research on currency systems is that spacing denominations apart by a factor of two is better than a factor of three as this lowers the average number of notes and coins exchanged in transactions. These theoretical studies also claim that an efficient denominational mix has the additional benefit of keeping down the production costs incurred by the central bank. This paper challenges this claim and demonstrates that more efficient currency systems can also be more costly. Central banks therefore face an efficiency–cost trade-off and have to weigh the benefits for transactors against those for the central bank itself.

This article considers European banknote iconography as an indicator of national branding choices from the early twentieth century up to the present. Systematic quantitative content analysis demonstrates that the values and ontologies expressed on Central/East European banknotes have historically tracked closely with the trends visible on their West European counterparts. This pattern is evident not just since the end of the Cold War, but indeed right from the founding of the modern Central/East European states about a century ago. Even during the Cold War, it did not take long for the trends on Western banknotes to appear on Central/East European banknotes as well. Thus, contrary to the conventional assumption of a deep-rooted normative gulf separating the national identity discourses of so-called “New” and “Old” Europe, the article underscores the fact of intense, longstanding normative cross-pollination between them.

This article presents an approach for finding displacements of print layers from sequences of sample images semi-automatically with the aim to simplify and shorten the setup of inspection systems for printing processes in which the perfect alignment of print layers cannot be guaranteed. The basic idea behind the proposed approach is to identify pixels which are likely to have the same displacements for a given pair of images. This relatively coarse information is computed for several pairs of sample images and aggregated in order to identify regions that tend to have the same displacement over a large proportion of image pair comparisons. This idea is motivated and justified in detail. The test cases considered in this study are data from banknote print inspection. We use these data to illustrate the steps of the algorithm. The examples demonstrate the method's capability to sensibly identify print layers, even if they overlap partially. Although the paper concentrates on a particular case study, the method can be used in any print inspection process with similar characteristics.

Mossbauer and X-ray fluorescence studies revealed that a number of valuable monetary units (dollars, pounds, yen, old German marks, and others) are printed using pigments which contain considerable amounts of iron. Mossbauer spectroscopy has been applied to the analysis of the pigments that are used in both authentic and counterfeit currency notes.

Prior to 1863, state-chartered banks in the United States issued notes—dollar-denominated promises to pay specie to the bearer on demand. Although these notes circulated at par locally, they usually were quoted at a discount outside the local area. These discounts varied by both the location of the bank and the location where the discount was being quoted. Further, these discounts were asymmetric across locations, meaning that the discounts quoted in location A on the notes of banks in location B generally differed from the discounts quoted in location B on the notes of banks in location A. Also, discounts generally increased when banks suspended payments on their notes. In this paper we construct a random matching model to qualitatively match these facts about banknote discounts. To attempt to account for locational differences, the model has agents that come from two distinct locations. Each location also has bankers that can issue notes. Banknotes are accepted in exchange because banks are required to produce when a banknote is presented for redemption and their past actions are public information. Overall, the model delivers predictions consistent with the behavior of discounts.

The Bank of England is responsible for maintaining confidence in banknotes. In meeting its banknote issuance responsibilities, the Bank aims to fully exploit innovation. The next £5, £10 and £20 banknotes will be printed on a polymer material. The switch to polymer will deliver banknotes that are more secure and better quality, and will support confidence in banknotes in the years ahead.

Counterfeit prevention is a major task for central banks, as it helps to maintain public confidence in the currency. It is often maintained that a high quality of the banknotes in circulation helps the public detect counterfeits. However, there has not been any scientific evidence in support of this assertion so far. The present study is a first attempt to fill this research gap. To investigate whether banknote quality affects counterfeit detection, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) and the Deutsche Bundesbank (DBB) conducted a field study in 2014 and 2015 amongst 250 consumers and 261 cashiers in the Netherlands and Germany. Participants received a set of 200 banknotes with either a high or a low average soil level, based on the actual circulation in two different countries. Real-life circulation in both Germany and the Netherlands is in between these values. Each set contained 20 counterfeit notes, which testees were asked to detect. On average, untrained consumers detect 79% of the counterfeits, whereas retail cashiers detect 88%. Cashiers are found to detect more counterfeits when the set is clean, even after controlling for a wide range of personal characteristics in a regression. The estimated effect of cleanliness on the cashiers' detection rate is an additional 0.87 out of 20 counterfeits (4.4%) For consumers, the quality of the sets does not change the hit rate in a statistically significant way.

Bank of England banknotes sampled from different locations in the UK have been analysed for the presence of cocaine, diamorphine (DAM), Δ 9 -tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). A database of the contamination detected is routinely used as a benchmark against which the contamination detected on seized banknotes can be compared. Evidence presented at court details how banknotes seized from a suspect may differ from banknotes in general circulation in terms of their contamination with controlled drugs. A question arising from such evidence is whether seized banknotes could have become contaminated through being in circulation in drug “hot spots”. In order to address this issue, a Plackett–Burman experimental design was used to investigate the influence of source location and other factors on banknote contamination with drugs of abuse. Banknotes were drawn from banks in eight regions throughout the UK. Each location could be described by a unique combination of the factors under investigation, namely whether the location was rural or urban, in the North or South of the UK, and whether it was a port of entry. The socio-economic class and the proportion of drug offenders in the area and the denomination of the banknotes were also considered as potentially influential factors. Indices were calculated to describe the degree to which samples were contaminated with different drugs, and normal probability plots were used to identify the factors that could account for the contamination observed. Whilst some factors were more influential than others, it was shown that, at the 95% confidence level, none of the proposed factors were significant influences on the contamination. Cocaine contamination on banknotes has been shown to follow a log-normal distribution. It was, therefore, possible to calculate F - and t -statistics to compare the cocaine contamination on the entire sample set with that detected on a second sample set consisting of banknotes all drawn from a single bank branch. It was shown that both inter-bank samples and intra-bank samples had similar variance and similar contamination levels at the 95% confidence level. This suggests that there are no significant regional trends in the contamination of banknotes with drugs of abuse across the UK.

In many countries, monies suspected of being associated with drug trafficking can be seized by the authorities. One of the ways of investigating this association is through the analysis of seized banknotes for traces of controlled drugs. We report three studies which may assist the expert in assessing whether banknotes contaminated with diamorphine are part of the general population of notes in circulation or whether they show unusual contamination patterns which require explanation. Study 1 is based on three plausible contamination scenarios as they may occur during the various stages of an illicit drug transaction and seizure. It shows that notes which have been in direct contact with visible traces of diamorphine show significantly higher contamination to those in more indirect contact with the drug. Study 2 investigates the transfer of diamorphine from one highly contaminated note to other notes in a bundle over a period of 10 weeks with and without agitation. It was found that the total amount of drug transferred was smaller than 6% and no more than 4 out of a bundle of 10 previously clean notes became lightly contaminated. Based on extensive background data, study 3 proposes a probabilistic model to assess whether an observed proportion of diamorphine bearing banknotes is likely to have been contaminated by chance. The model predicts that there is only a 0.3% chance that a bundle of 100 notes from the general banknote population contains more than six contaminated specimens. Jointly, the three studies give useful indications for the spread of contamination throughout a sample and the amounts of heroin which may be expected given plausible contamination scenarios.

Various intelligent systems show a rapidly growing potential use of visual information processing technologies. This paper presents an example of employing visual information processing technologies for detecting and measuring rings in banknote images. The size of the rings is one of parameters used to inspect the banknote printing quality. The approach developed consists of two phases. In the first phase, based on histogram processing and data clustering, image areas containing rings are localized and edges of the rings are detected. Then, in the second phase, applying the hard and possibilistic spherical shell clustering to the extracted edge pixels the ring centre and radii are estimated. The experimental investigations performed have shown that even highly occluded rings are robustly detected. Several prototypes of the system developed have been installed in two banknote printing shops in Europe.

The improvement of reliability in banknote neuro-classifier is investigated and a reject option is proposed based on the probability density function of the input data. The classification reliability is evaluated through two reliability parameters, which are associated with the winning class probability and the second maximal probability. Then a threshold value is set up to reject the unreliable classifications. As for modeling the non-linear correlation among the data variables and extracting the features, a local principal components analysis (PCA) is applied. The method is tested with a learning vector quantization (LVQ) classifier using 1440 data samples of various US dollar bills. The results show that by taking a suitable reject threshold value and also a proper number of regions for the local PCA, the reliability of system can be improved significantly.

Automated currency validation requires a decision to be made regarding the authenticity of a banknote presented to the validation system. This decision often has to be made with little or no information regarding the characteristics of possible counterfeits as is the case for issues of new currency. A method for automated currency validation is presented which segments the whole banknote into different regions, builds individual classifiers on each region and then combines a small subset of the region specific classifiers to provide an overall decision. The segmentation and combination of region specific classifiers to provide optimized false positive and false negative rates is achieved by employing a genetic algorithm. Experiments based on high value notes of Sterling currency were carried out to assess the effectiveness of the proposed solution.

We study an economy in which intermediaries have incentives to issue circulating liabilities as part of an equilibrium. We show that, with arbitrarily small transactions costs, only the liabilities of intermediaries will circulate, and not those of other private sector agents. Therefore, our model connects intermediation activity with the issuance of payments media, a connection that has not been made in earlier literature. We also describe conditions under which equilibrium outcomes may be volatile when private liabilities circulate. Finally, we use our model to suggest a resolution of the "banknote underissue puzzle" of Cagan (1993).

Using confidential Federal Reserve data, we study the factors driving U.S. banknote flows between the United States and other countries. These flows are a significant component of capital flows in emerging market economies, where physical U.S. currency functions as a safe asset and precautionary demand for U.S. banknotes is a form of flight to quality. Prior to the global financial crisis, country-specific factors, including local economic uncertainty, largely explain the volume and heterogeneity of the flows. Since the crisis, global factors, particularly, global economic uncertainty, explain the flows markedly well. Further, precautionary demand for U.S. banknotes is not episodic.

The issue of what constitutes the socially optimal series of coins and banknotes has been widely debated in the literature without being fully settled yet. In a substantial development, Lee et al. (2005) introduce a matching model that endogenizes the denominational structure. However, in the absence of a penalty for increases in the number of denominations, the model favors series with 'too many denominations'. In this paper, we implement the suggestion of Lee et al. to introduce a fixed cost per denomination, to test the widespread idea that the size of the series is limited by the production costs of money. Using a version of the model parameterized with US banknote production costs, we show that this belief does not hold. This suggests that the limitations from adopting new denominations are rather on the side of the cash users, a dimension that is lacking in the current payment models.

Previous work by the authors has proposed a banknote recognition system using a neural network (NN) to develop new types of banknote recognition machines. This system is constructed by means of some core techniques. One is a small-scale neural recognition technique using masks. The second is a mask-optimization technique using a genetic algorithm (GA). The last is a neural hardware technique using a digital signal processor (DSP). This paper focuses on and discusses the mask optimization by the GA, which is the second core technique in the neural recognition system. This technique enables the selection of good masks, that can effectively generate the characteristic values of the input image. Further, the effectiveness of this technique is shown not only by the generalization of the NN, but also by a statistical analysis, using the Italian banknotes. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the neural recognition system is shown by using worldwide banknotes.

An unexpected shortage of banknotes emerged during 1992 in the former Soviet Union. The cash shortage is explained by the asymmetry in the monetary union that prevailed, under which one member, the Russian Federation, controlled banknote production while every member could create deposit money. Adjustments in interest rates or the cash–deposit exchange rate could have mitigated the shortage. The possible efficiency costs of the cash shortage are explored.

The first banknotes in Scotland were issued in 1695 following the incorporation of the Bank of Scotland. In a country critically short of coin and vulnerable to changes in its value, they were an almost immediate success. A century later no fewer than 21 banks, mainly private, issued notes, and Scotland was awash with paper money. This proliferation of paper would hardly have been possible without a stable legal framework. In 1749 the case of Crawfurd v The Royal Bank considered, and settled, one of the key legal issues: whether the holder of a banknote took free from infirmities of title which affected those from whom it had been acquired. In the litigation Mr Crawfurd sought to vindicate a £20 Bank of Scotland note which had gone missing in the post and turned up some time later in the hands of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The printed arguments of counsel which have survived provide a fascinating glimpse into a collision between orthodox property law on the one hand and the needs of commerce and the future of the banking system on the other. According to the former, Mr Crawfurd’s victory was assured because no one can acquire title through a thief; according to the latter, the Royal Bank must prevail, for any other result ‘would be to render the Notes absolutely useless, and consequently would in a great Measure deprive the Nation of the Benefit of the Banks, which could hardly subsist without the Circulation of their Notes’. In this battle of doctrine against policy, Roman law was used as a proxy, with both sides calling on Digest texts and on the account of vindication in Voet’s Commentarius ad Pandectas. Victory for the Royal Bank was obtained only by re-characterising a rule of bona fide consumption, by spending, as one of bona fide acquisition; and so with this flimsiest of doctrinal veneers, the free circulation of banknotes was assured.

In recent years, numerous central banks throughout the world have introduced plastic banknotes in order to combat counterfeiting and reduce their operating costs. In this paper, we provide an analytical framework that allows central banks to assess whether changing the manufacturing material of their coins or banknotes would be beneficial. We use this framework to estimate, for the case of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the potential operating gains and the break-even horizon of the adoption of plastic banknotes. In our benchmark scenario, we find that a complete adoption of plastic notes would save the Fed $140 million per year, and that the $1 bill would be the most lucrative to replace.