The Economics of Agentic AI: Investigating How Monetary Properties and Economic Conditions Shape AI Agents’ Preferences for Transacting with Mediums of Exchange

Abstract

Autonomous artificial intelligence agents are increasingly assuming responsibility for economic transactions previously conducted by humans. In performing these transactions, such agents must select among competing forms of digital currency, including USD- and EUR-denominated stablecoins, gold-backed tokens, and tokenized bank deposits, each of which differs substantially in liquidity, volatility, reserve backing, and governance structure. Existing research on stablecoin adoption has focused predominantly on human users operating under observed market conditions, leaving unresolved whether the monetary preferences of autonomous agents are shaped systematically by these underlying instrument properties or by broader economic conditions such as cross-border frictions, inflationary pressure, and banking-sector instability. To address this gap, we evaluated monetary preferences across four large language models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek) using a constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) utility framework (γ = 3.0) that formalized tradeoffs among governance quality, reserve transparency, liquidity, transaction costs, and counterparty risk. We also tested whether explicit governance-focused prompting changed model rankings relative to baseline. All four models consistently ranked currencies with stronger governance, regulatory compliance, and lower financial risk first. Across a 4-model × 2-condition design (8 evaluations), all four models produced identical first-choice rankings under both conditions (100% agreement), with no change in first-choice preference. All four models picked the same top currency whether or not they were told to consider governance, suggesting they already favored safer, well-governed currencies by default. This suggests AI agents making financial decisions on their own will naturally gravitate toward safer, more trustworthy stablecoins, even without being told to prioritize safety.