barter (redirected from Barter economy)

The exchange of goods or services without the use of money as currency.

Barter is a contract wherein parties trade goods or commodities for other goods, as opposed to sale or exchange of goods for money. Barter is not applicable to contracts involving land, but solely to contracts relating to goods and services. For example, when a tenant exchanges the performance of various maintenance tasks around a house for free room and board, a barter has taken place.

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barter verb bargain, buy and sell, deal, dicker, give and take, give in exchange, haggle, interchange, make exchanges, market, merces mutare, merchandise, peddle, rem pro re pacisci, rem re mutare, strike a bargain, swap, switch, trade, trade by exchange, trade off, traffic by exxhange, vend

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See also: alienate, business, commerce, deal, dealings, dicker, exchange, handle, interchange, sell, trade

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BARTER. A contract by which the parties exchange goods for goods. To complete the contract the goods must be delivered, for without a delivery, the right of property is not changed.
     2. This contract differs from a sale in this, that barter is always of goods for goods, whereas a sale is an exchange of goods for money. In the former there never is a price fixed, in the latter a price is indispensable. All the differences which may be pointed out between these two contracts, are comprised in this; it is its necessary consequence. When the contract is an exchange of goods on one side, and on the other side the consideration is partly goods and partly money, the contract is not a barter, but a sale. See Price; Sale.
     3. If an insurance be made upon returns from a country where trade is carried on by barter, the valuation of the goods in return shall be made on the cost of those given in barter, adding all charges. Wesk. on Ins. 42. See 3 Camp. 351 Cowp. 818; 1 Dougl. 24, n.; 1 N. R. 151 Tropl. de l'Echange.