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o suggests that, in total, as much as one-quarter to one-third of the world's circulating currency was recently located outside its country of issue.
So far, of course, the growing competition among currencies has been limited to state-sanctioned monies only. Private monies do also exist, both domestically and internationally, to rival the official issue of central banks. But none, as yet, has had an impact on monetary affairs that might be described as anything more than marginal. At the domestic level, diverse local currencies circulate in a number of countries (L. Solomon 1996). Such monies, however, are really little different from institutionalized systems of multilateral barter, and none trade across national frontiers. At the international level, private substitutes for state monies have long existed in the form of what economists call "artificial currency units" (ACUs) -- non-state alternatives designed to perform one or more of the standard roles of money (Aschheim and Park 1976). Traditionally, though, most ACUs have functioned mainly as a unit of account or store of value, rather than as a medium of exchange, thus posing little direct threat to more usable state-sanctioned currencies. In recent years the only non-state form of money that has been used to any substantial degree in international markets is a pool of privately issued assets denominated in ECUs, the European Union's old European Currency Unit that came into existence with the European Monetary System in 1979 (now replaced by EMU). Despite having attained limited success in global financial markets, however, the ECU was never widely accepted for private transactional purposes. The IMF's Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are also a form of ACU but for official use only, to be traded among governments or between governments and the Fund.

However, this does not mean that the competition could not be widened further to include private monies as well. That is where electronic money comes in. In a world already increasingly accustomed to choice among currencies, there seems little that is anomalous in adding new and potentially attractive virtual monies to the menu. Quite the contrary, taking a long view, the development of e-money seems more like the closing of a circle following what was, in historical terms, a relatively brief interlude of national currency monopolies. (11) Monetary geography today is rapidly harking back to the deterritorialized model that existed prior to the era of territorial currency - "back to the future," as one source (Craig 1996) has quipped, alluding to the popular film of the same name. (12) From this perspective, the prospect of electronic money appears not only natural but inevitable.

III. Consequences for Monetary Policy 货币政策的后果

This brings us to our main topic. How will all this affect the ability of central banks to manage the macroeconomic performance of the economy? Monetary policy, arguably, has already been significantly compromised in many countries by the deterritorialization of state-sanctioned currencies. The question is what additional complications, if any, are added by the introduction of electronic money. Analysis suggests that the answer will differ significantly depending on what countries we are talking about.
How monetary policy works
To begin, consider how monetary policy works with a t