Medium of exchange was observed as early as Oresme, Copernicus and then in 1558 by Sir Thomas Gresham, that bad money drives out good in any marketplace (Gresham's Law states "Where legal tender laws exist, bad money drives out good money"). A more precise definition is this: "A currency that is artificially overvalued by law will drive out of circulation a currency that is artificially undervalued by that law." Gresham's law is therefore a specific application of the general law of price controls. A common explanation is that people will always keep the less adultered, less clipped, sweated, less filed, less trimmed coin,
Say's law real shocks cause recessions and that the market responds efficiently to these real economic shocks. Paul Krugman dismisses Say's law as, "at best, a useless tautology when individuals have the option of accumulating money rather than purchasing real goods and services". It is not easy to say what exactly Say's law says about the role of money apart from the claim that recession is not caused by lack of money. The phrase "products are paid for with products" is taken to mean that Say has a barter model of money; contrast with circuitist and post-Keynesian monetary theory. One can read