Barter
The barter is a form of trade in which goods or services directly for other goods or services exchanged are without a return money is used.
General
If the buyer generally suffers from a lack of money or foreign exchange or, especially in an economic crisis, the trust in the monetary value dwindles, barter occurs or substitute currencies such as B. the cigarette currency in post-war Germany. For example, during the supply crisis in Venezuela from 2015, barter in Venezuela's rural areas experienced a second youth, while in the cities, substitute currencies in the new form of crypto currencies were sought.
In Germany, according to § 480 BGB, the same rules apply to the exchange contract as to the purchase .
history
Barter is the oldest form of foreign trade . When there was no money , it was considered the only way to buy goods. Traders or farmers exchanged objects or farm animals for food or other everyday necessities in order to meet requirements . For the ancient Babylonians , there was no great legal difference between buying and trading, because they were viewed as identical legal transactions with the aim of selling goods. Already the Old Testament demanded in the 3rd book of Moses that the exchange value of both exchange objects should be approximately the same: “One should neither exchange nor exchange an animal, a good for a bad or a bad for a good. But if someone exchanges one animal for the other, they should both be holy ”( Lev 27.10 EU ). A barter practiced in special situations, first by Herodotus in the 5th century BC. Mentioned BC, was the silent trade . It is discussed to what extent the descriptions of a trade in goods in which the trading partners neither saw each other nor spoke to each other are historically correct or rather legendary.
The Romans knew the barter trade ( Latin permutatio mercium , "exchange of goods"), because until the introduction of money there was only an exchange contract on the basis of barter , in which the contracting parties exchanged things with approximately the same exchange value. Cicero understood the "permutatio" to mean sales. According to Iulius Paulus , the exchange later had to give ownership of the item to the recipient for both contracting parties. It was clear to him that when exchanging, it was impossible to differentiate between buyer and seller. In early Roman law , the exchange contract began to be replaced by the purchase contract ( Latin emptio venditio ; literally: "purchase / sale"). The high-class lawyer of the 2nd century, Gaius , demanded in his institutions that the purchase price had to exist “in sounding money”; the exchange contract was now considered outdated. Since then, the previous exchange value has been replaced by the more objective monetary value . But the lack of money, which began under Augustus , kept the barter contract alive. The Greeks obtained wine by devoting bronze, iron, skins and slaves.
In the early Middle Ages, barter continued to prevail, goods changed hands without paying any money for them. The Middle High German word “tûsch” (“fun, mockery, deception, deceit, exchange”) first established itself in 1172 in Priest Wernher's “Three songs from the maid” (“Driu liet from the maget”). The middle-high word already indicated that when exchanging, one can be deceived or deceived by differently assessed exchange values. In the Middle Ages, barter transactions in addition to sales contracts remained common despite the available money. It happened that within Germany, double customs duties were charged for exchange transactions. The exchange of land was also common, in this way land neighbors pursued private land consolidation .
Up until the middle of the 18th century there was a barter trade known as "Verstechen" or "Change" in the German book trade. Books and other written products at book fairs were only exchanged between the individual printers or publishers according to their quantity , with the principle of “sheet for sheet” or “book for book” being traded. From the middle of the 18th century, this type of trade was only replaced by the so-called net trade and a short time later by the still valid trading conditions . The General Prussian Land Law (APL) of June 1794 named the two exchange counterparties buyer and seller (I 11, § 364 APL) and gave both of them the option of "withdrawing from the exchange" if the exchange value was unequal (I 11, § 365 APL ). The Austrian ABGB of January 1812 defined the exchange as a contract, "whereby one thing is surrendered for another thing" (§ 1045 ABGB).
The East Committee of the German Economy , founded in October 1952, promoted trade with Eastern Europe. The so-called "Eastern trade" had to take into account the weak exchange rates of the Eastern COMECON members, so that compensation transactions represented the most important transactions between German exporters and the Eastern Bloc. The German-Soviet tube natural gas business since February 1970 went back to him, a barter who exchanged large German tubes and bank loans for Soviet natural gas deliveries. From 1976 onwards, due to the drastic rise in green coffee prices, there was a coffee crisis in the GDR , which could only be partially resolved through barter deals with “armaments for coffee”, for example with Ethiopia. Around the same time, France expanded its nuclear power ( French Force de frappe ) from 1974 by importing uranium from the Central African Republic in exchange for weapons.
Developing countries with weak foreign currencies and without sufficient market power are left with the option of exporting their raw materials by importing finished products from industrialized countries in return .
species
A distinction is made between the following types:
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Barter transactions / barter clearing : Barter ( English barter , "exchange, exchange") means various forms of cashless clearing systems . In barter transactions is transactions of two deliveries of the same exchange value at which no payments flow. In barter clearing (often also bartering or ring swap ), goods and services are not settled bilaterally, but multilaterally via a moneyless clearing system between commercial and / or private participants. The clearing systems are mediated by barter organizations that maintain a clearing account (which works like a current account ) for each company . The value of the respective exchange objects is expressed in the accounting unit of the respective national currency and offset among the participants.
- Corporate Trading is the bartering between businesses with inventories whose fair values by age impairment , damage , corrosion , returns or for worse have dropped, and the provider. The provider issues a credit in the amount of the book value , which the company can use by purchasing services that conserve liquidity .
- Bartering in the media refers to the barter of programs and program slots for advertising time . For example, a magazine provides a television station with a page for advertising and in return receives a television commercial .
- Compensation transactions are mostly used in foreign trade when importers become exporters in return for a lack of money or foreign exchange . For example, developing countries import capital and consumer goods from industrialized countries and export raw materials in return . Full compensation is required for compensation transactions in order to be considered barter.
- Sharing networks are events in which exchange willing market participants mutually goods through barter agreement to exchange. These are not real exchanges because the market participants present their exchange objects to each other.
- The bartering on the Internet takes place through file-sharing Internet instead.
These types of barter do not involve a payment process , even partial.
Demarcation
At times barter deals are viewed as synonymous with barter deals. Barter, however, always requires that no cash payment - not even as a partial service - is made in return. However, there are also compensation transactions, some of which involve a cash payment.
literature
- Stephan Füssel, Helmut Hiller: Dictionary of the book . 7th, fundamentally revised edition. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-465-03495-3 .
- Michael Wigge: Wigge's exchange frenzy. Around the world for a home. Bastei Lübbe, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-404-60668-9 .
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Crisis en Venezuela: cómo funcionan los mercados del trueque en el país , BBC, April 15, 2019
- ↑ Nothing to eat, but free gasoline , SPON, February 5, 2019
- ↑ Mariano San Nicolò, The Final Clauses of the Old Babylonian Purchase and Exchange Contracts , 1974, p. 109
- ^ Gaius, Institutiones , 2, 4, 2
- ↑ Iulius Paulus, Digest , 19, 4, 1
- ^ Gaius, Institutions , 3, 139-141
- ^ Karl Friedrich Thormann, Der doppelte Ursprung der Mancipatio , 1969, p. 125
- ^ Gaius, Digest , 3, 141
- ↑ Neil Grant, Das Mittelalter , 2006, p. 27
- ↑ Ulrike Köbler, Werden, Wandel und Wesen des German private law vocabulary , 2010, p. 245
- ↑ Dietrich Denecke / Helga-Maria Kühn (eds.), Göttingen: From the beginnings to the end of the Thirty Years War , Volume I, 1987, p. 423
- ^ Christian Friedrich Koch, General Land Law for the Prussian States , Volume 1, Issue 1, 1852, p. 684
- ↑ Annette Weber / Markus Kaim, The Central African Republic in the Crisis , in: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik Aktuell 10 of March 10, 2014, p. 5
- ↑ Axel J. Halbach / Rigmar Osterkamp, The role of barter for developing countries , 1988, p. 117
- ^ Rolf Stober / Marian Paschke (eds.), German and International Business Law , 2017, Rn. 808
- ↑ Dieter Hoppen, Sales Management , 1999, p. 302
- ↑ Michael Thierhoff / Renate Müller (eds.), Unternehmenssanierung , 2016, p. 228 f.
- ↑ Christian Bachem, Television in the USA: Newer Developments in the TV Market and TV Advertising , 1995, p. 106 f.
- ↑ Rudolf Sachs, Guide to Foreign Trade , 1990, p. 41