A Metric for Money

The argument advanced here is that money worldwide has no recognized metric, no measuring instrument that defines the value of national currencies. In place of a metric, economists have substituted price indexes and monetary policy. Unanchored to economic realities, money numbers have dispersed in ever-greater inequality. At the same time, the proper metric for money has been the center of gravity of currency exchange rates, unrecognized, the de facto world money metric, for as long as the International Monetary Fund has published the data to see it. That metric is work time. It now needs to be adopted de jure as the world money unit.

Evaluation Method of Design Products Based on Eco-Efficiency

Evaluation methods of Environmental burdens have been improved. Some of those methods indicate intensity of environmental burdens in money unit to make them comparable to production cost. Moreover, from sustainability point of view, improvement of functions is as important as reduction of environmental burdens. Namely, environmental burdens and functions have to be balanced. Therefore, we aimed to develop the evaluation method of design products that is able to optimize balance between them. We had developed the evaluation method of environmental burdens, which indicates potential of economical loss caused by environmental impacts and defined it as Societal Cost. This is used for evaluation of environmental burden. In this paper, we improve this method by adding the Function Value. To compare the value of functions with environmental burdens, every evaluation criterion has to be integrated in single score, and it is desired to be money unit. We derived value of functions by using the information theory and defined it as Function Value. Eco-Efficiency Index evaluates products. This is based on the concept of Eco-Efficiency and calculated by dividing Function Value by Societal Cost. Societal Cost: Pollutants cause many environmental impacts and many kinds of losses through their lifetimes, and most of them can not be converted into money except the loss of productivity. Societal Cost indicates the social loss of productivity by the decrease of human health caused by the increase of disease or disaster originates on emission of pollutants. Function Value: To evaluate products’ value in single score, value of each functions existing in product has to be quantified and integrated. The information theory is applied for this method. Amount of information of each function is derived from probability of satisfying consumer. However, functions have different importance. Therefore, amounts of information of functions are added up after weighted by Relative Importance of each function, which is determined by using QFDE. We defined it as Integrated Amount of Information. It is also important to think the span of utilization. To express the relation between product’s value and time in use, three types of depreciation methods are applied. They should be chosen in accordance with aging characteristics of product. Eco-Efficiency Index: Eco-Efficiency Index is defined as Function Value divided by Societal Cost. This definition is based on the concept of Eco-Efficiency advocated world wide, which mean obtained value per unit amount of environmental burden.

Euro Illusion: Psychological Insights into Price Evaluations with a Unitary Currency

The Euro illusion is a phenomenon related to the money illusion whereby people are biased toward the nominal representation of the Euro (the numbers printed on notes and coins) when evaluating prices in the new currency. In Study 1 the Euro illusion was demonstrated in telephone interviews of a Swedish population-based sample. However, no Euro illusion was found for British students in Study 2. An additional two studies employing student samples demonstrated the Euro illusion for fictitious unknown currencies in that prices of goods or services were evaluated as less expensive when the money unit was larger. An exception, however, was that prices were evaluated as more expensive when the money unit was very small (like the Italian Lira). Furthermore, the illusion was weaker or absent for low-price essential goods or services or for an induced negative attitude toward the currency change.