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最开始,黄金的作用仅仅是审美,观赏。然而,今天这种宝贵的亮色金属不仅在珠宝,装饰,部分义齿或电子工业原料中扮演着重要角色，而且也被作为是一个经济因素。事实上黄金不能仅仅被视为简单的原料，它并不同于其他的商品。的确,纵观人类历史,黄金在人类生产或获得财富中代表着最简单、安全、方便的方式。甚至黄金珠宝正是由于这个原因而出现的:抓紧自己的财富，以免有被盗或失去它的风险。

英国经济学家威廉.佩蒂爵士认为，与其遵循与政府活动有关的“自由放任”的哲理，宁愿将黄金作为在各时各地的财富[1]。

The Role Of Gold In Economies Economics Essay

Introduction

Gold has gone hand in hand with the history of mankind for millennia. It has been one of the first metals to be transformed into objects mainly used for ritual or ornamental purposes. In fact, the beauty and ease of manufacture the metal have inspired craftsmen to use it to create objects intended to be used not only as ornaments, but also as potent symbols of wealth and power.

At first, Gold role was only aesthetic, ornamental. However, today the precious bright color metal not only plays an important role as jewel, decoration, partial denture or electronic industry raw material. Today, Gold is primarily consider as an economic factor. In fact Gold cannot be merely regarded as simple raw material. Gold is something more and different from the other commodities. Indeed, throughout human history, gold has represented the most simple, secure and convenient way to keep the wealth produced or acquired by humans. Even the Gold jewels were born for this reason: to hold tight own wealth avoiding the risk of being stolen or to lose it.

Sir William Petty, English economist attributed as having started the philosophy of 'laissez-faire' in relation to government activity, referred to Gold as wealth ‘at all times and all places’ [1] . Just in 1776 Adams Smith in its magnum opus ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’ [2] interrupted mercantilism idea that large reserves of gold bullion were necessary for a country's economic success consecrating work as the main source of nations’ wealth and replacing Gold as the ultimate measure of value.

Anyway, Gold’s aim of value measurement and reserve has been endorsed by its historical link with money. According to Herodotus, the Greek ‘father of History’, the first coins of Gold and silver, with weight and value established by the State, appeared in Lydia, ancient region of Minor Asia now corresponding to western Turkey, that from the ninth to the sixth century before Christ was one of three great civilizations of Turkey [3] .

Gold began to be widely used as a currency in 1816 as England adopted for the first time the ‘Gold Standard’ system, later followed by other countries as Germany in 1872 and U.S.A. in 1900. Gold standard is a monetary system in which Gold shall act as a general economic unit of account of the market value of goods, services or assets. With this system, national currencies were convertible to Gold. Coinage was free and Gold, both in the form of currency or raw material, could be freely imported and exported. As a consequence, exchange rate between currencies of different countries remained stable, as it could vary only within a fixed parity that, in addition to exchange rate stability, should ensure the balance of international trade.

As a complete monetary system, the ‘Gold standard’ ceased to ex