The cash-in-advance constraint, also known as the Clower constraint after American economist

Robert W. Clower Robert Wayne Clower (February 13, 1926 – May 2, 2011) was an American economist. He is credited with having largely created the field of stocks and flows, stock-flow analysis in economics and with seminal works on the microfoundations of monetary ...

, is an idea used in

economic theory Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

to capture monetary phenomena. In the most basic

economic model In economics, a model is a theoretical construct representing economic processes by a set of variables and a set of logical and/or quantitative relationships between them. The economic model is a simplified, often mathematical, framework desi ...

s (such as the Walras model or the

Arrow–Debreu model In mathematical economics, the Arrow–Debreu model suggests that under certain economic assumptions (convex preferences, perfect competition, and demand independence) there must be a set of prices such that aggregate supplies will equal aggregat ...

) there is no role for money, as these models are not sufficiently detailed to consider how people pay for goods, other than to say everyone has a budget constraint. To be able to say anything about the

money supply In macroeconomics, the money supply (or money stock) refers to the total volume of currency held by the public at a particular point in time. There are several ways to define "money", but standard measures usually include currency in circul ...

inflation In economics, inflation is an increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reduct ...

monetary policy Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to control either the interest rate payable for very short-term borrowing (borrowing by banks from each other to meet their short-term needs) or the money supply, often a ...

and so on, economists must therefore introduce additional assumptions into their models. One possibility, and the more popular one, is to introduce a cash-in-advance constraint i.e. a requirement that each consumer or firm must have sufficient cash available before they can buy goods. An alternative assumption would be a 'Money-in-the-Utility-Function' assumption pioneered by

Miguel Sidrauski Miguel Sidrauski (October 12, 1939 – September 1, 1968) was an Argentine economist who made important contributions to the theory of economic growth by developing a modified version of the Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans model to describe the effects o ...

, which states that people have a tendency to hold a certain amount of cash because they derive utility from holding it. Without these (or similar) assumptions economic theory would find it difficult to explain why people carry around a good (money) which takes up space in their wallet, can't be consumed and does not earn any interest.

Terms

''Cash in advance'' is a term describing terms of purchase, when full payment for a good or service is due before the merchandise is shipped. This presents the least risk to a seller while having the most risk to the buyer. It is often combined with other terms such as

Free On Board FOB (free on board) is a term in international commercial law specifying at what point respective obligations, costs, and risk involved in the delivery of goods shift from the seller to the buyer under the Incoterms standard published by the Inte ...

, which require the buyer to take possession of the merchandise as soon as it is loaded onto transportation, meaning the buyer assumes the financial risk if the shipment is lost or damaged en route. In actual daily business these sort of terms are extremely rare unless the goods or services are of phenomenal value and high fragility. A ''constraint'' is any operating condition that puts a limit on the ability of a business to conduct its operations.

Examples

A company with $5000 on hand and incomes of $3000 a month has a constraint of $8000. That means, if the terms of an economic exchange (buying equipment, etc.) require terms that are cash-in-advance, then the limit that the company can actually obtain is $8000.

Uses

It is mostly used in a theoretical sense, to provide proofs of economic efficiencies, since it does not (by definition) involve terms of

credit Credit (from Latin verb ''credit'', meaning "one believes") is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt) ...

financing Funding is the act of providing resources to finance a need, program, or project. While this is usually in the form of money, it can also take the form of effort or time from an organization or company. Generally, this word is used when a firm use ...

. In these modeling theories, CIAC tends to show that up-front restrictions artificially limit the ability of companies to maintain positive inventory levels while reducing capital investment. They also inhibit real wealth in terms of cash on hand while elevating the likelihood of using junk bonds as instruments of solvency, a dangerous premise.

References

{{reflist Monetary economics