 Representative money is any medium of exchange that represents something of value, but has little or no value of its own intrinsic value. However, unlike some forms of fiat money which may not have anything of value backing it to be a genuine representative money, there must always be something valuable supporting the face value represented. More specifically, the term representative money has been used variously to mean the claim on a commodity, for example gold certificates or silver certificates. In this sense it may be called commodity backed money. Any type of money that has face value greater than its value as material substance. Used in this sense, most types of fiat money are a type of representative money. Historically, the use of representative money predates the invention of coinage. In the ancient empires of Egypt, Babylon, India and China, the temples and palaces often had commodity warehouses which issued certificates of deposit as evidence of a claim up on a portion of the goods stored in the warehouses, a form of representative money. According to economist William Stanley Joven's 1875 representative money in the form of banknotes arose because metal coins often were variously clipped or depreciated during use, but using representations for the value stored in banks ensured its worth. He noted that paper and other materials have been used as representative money. In 1895 economist Joseph Shield Nicholson wrote that credit expansion and contraction was in fact the expansion and contraction of representative money. In 1930 for economist William Howard Steiner wrote that the term was used at one time to signify that a certain amount of bullion was stored in the treasury while the equivalent paper in circulation represented the bullion.