Define barter system. What are the difficulties faced by people under this system?

Barter system refers to the system where goods are exchanged for goods without the use of money. 

Difficulties of barter system:

(a) Problem of double coincidence of wants: Lack of double coincidence of wants means when two persons may not desire to purchase each other’s goods. For example Mr. A has wheat and wants salt. So Mr. A has to search for Mr. B who wants wheat and has salt, otherwise, the exchange would not be possible.

(b) Lack of common measure of value: In olden times there was no common unit in terms of which the value of goods could be measured. 

(c) Indivisibility of certain goods: There was a problem of exchange when a person had large commodities which could not be divided into smaller units Eg. 1 goat = 20 kg rice. If a person wanted 5 kg of rice, the goat could not be cut and exchanged.

(d) Difficulty in the storage of goods: It was necessary to store goods for future use but as most of the things were perishable, it was difficult to store. 

(e) Problem of making deferred payments: It means a payment to be made in the future. For E.g. taking a loan and making a payment in the future was not possible in the barter system. So, to overcome these difficulties of the barter system, people invented some other kind of money.