Research Discussion Paper

RDP 2018-12

 

 

Where’s the Money‽
An Investigation into the Whereabouts
and Uses of Australian Banknotes

Richard Finlay, Andrew Staib and Max Wakefield

 

 

The techniques that we
employ suggest that, of total outstanding banknotes: 15–35 per cent are used to facilitate legitimate
transactions; roughly half to three-quarters are hoarded as a store of wealth or for other purposes,
of which we can allocate 10–20 percentage points to domestic hoarding and up to 15 percentage
points to international hoarding; 4–8 per cent are used in the shadow economy; and 5–10 per cent
are lost.