Talk:Coincidence of wants

Coincidence of wants and barter
The article does not consider the number of participants in the trade when it compares barter and money. We always consider monetary trade as a bilateray trade, but barter allows more participants - there is the historic example of the triangular trade. Opportunities of coincidence of wants should not be analyzed as it is with monetary trades, because only bilateral trade is considered.

I do not agree when it is said that a barter trade must be done at the same place. I can barter a stock I own in Europe in exchange of an other in USA, needing it in USA, and my customer needing it in Europe. I am shure, a lot of petrol could be saved by thinking about it!!!

Goods have to be transported even if they are bought with money.

We could also discuss about the coincidence in time: All kind of precious goods can be used to stock the value of a transaction.

A transaction cost not really considered is complexity : it is easier to buy with money that to settle a barter contract with 3 or 4 participants, that's why money is used now. But complexity can be solved by computers, and change the natural position of money. Olivierchaussavoine 14:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Article needed
Wikipedia needs an article on the Kiyotaki-Wright model. It would refer to their 1989, 1991, and 1993 papers. Rinconsoleao (talk) 08:47, 6 October 2010 (UTC).

"Coincidence of wants" and "double coincidence of wants" are treated as synonyms
Sorry, I don't know the history of this seeming confusion, so I am not able to correct the article. It seems incorrect, though: a double shot is not the same as a shot, is it? 75.185.66.0 (talk) 22:09, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree. It seems absurd to call the situation that the musician wants housing and the landlord wants music a "double coincidence", since there is no coincidence if the musician wants housing and the landlord doesn't want music, or vice versa. &mdash; Sebastian 02:47, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
 * So, since nobody replied to you since last year, I did change the article to marginalize the "double" wording. However, on second thought, I see how it can make sense: If A wants good G and supplies good H, B wants H and supplies J, and C wants J and supplies G, one might speak of a triple coincidence. In that case, maybe the authors call each want-supply pair, such as "A supplies G, and B wants G" a "single coincidence", even though by itself it does not lead to a trade. We still need someone who read the book to confirm that, though. &mdash; Sebastian 03:10, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
 * "William Stanley Jevons and Ross M. Starr use the term 'double coincidence of wants' for the same concept." It also seems a bit weird to have Jevons and Starr there together  - Jevons is a late 19th century political economist and is closely associated with the term and concept, but who is Starr? Is Starr just one of many economists who took it up in the 20th century, among many others? I also can't find Jevons ever using the phrase "double coincidence of wants", despite many claims that he has. Can we either have an actual pinpoint citation or remove? In "Money and the Mechanism of Exchange" he talks about "want of coincidence" (in other words, lack of coincidence) and "double coincidence" and "the improbability of coincidence between persons wanting and persons possessing" but he doesn't seem to use the phrase "double coincidence of wants".  franciscrot 10:14, 25 June 2022