Definition of "seigniorage" []

• Revenue or a profit taken from the minting of coins, usually the difference between the value of the bullion used and the face value of the coin. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In fact, this new model brought two main advantages to the US: in on hand the revenues from the money creation itself called seigniorage and on the other hand the possibility to hold a trade deficit for a very long time."
• "This gain, called seigniorage, is an implicit tax on the people's cash balances."
• "The problem with this second option, he points out, is that in a highly developed financial system such as ours, the federal government's gain from printing money, what economists call seigniorage, is quite small."