Are BerkShares and Other Local Currencies Effective?
METABOSTON - Local activists in the Berkshires created a local currency called BerkShares
to encourage the local economy. Tim Harford questions whether they do any
economic good but thinks they may build community ties:
"The real benefits, if they exist, are not economic but social, and best
explained not by an economist like me but by a sociologist such as Ed Collom
of the University of Southern Maine.