The Nonstationarity of Money and Prices in Interdependent Economies

In most nations, paths of monetary aggregates and prices consistently depart from stationary trends. This paper shows that this is a fundamental implication when monetary authorities of interdependent countries seek to smooth their home output and prices in the presence of incomplete world output-market integration and structural asymmetries. Using a two-country model with interdependent output supply schedules, we show that this conclusion holds whether the exchange rate floats or is fixed. It also holds if monetary policies are coordinated. Therefore, optimal monetary policy choices by central banks yield stationary paths for money and prices only under very specific conditions.     

转型经济的货币深化与货币挤出:中国和俄罗斯的不同

通货膨胀是转型经济所要面临的挑战,因此分析转型经济的货币问题十分必要。通过构建货币深化和货币挤出两种不同货币现象的分析框架,并对中国和俄罗斯的现实情况进行比较,可以发现,货币超发并非通货膨胀的充分条件,只要能够控制好货币的流向,引导货币向货币资本转化,就能够防范和治理通货膨胀,以交易方程式和鲍莫尔—托宾模型的实证检验也印证了上述观点。     

A Note on Modelling Money Demand in Growing Economies

A prominent feature of US data is the lack of cointegration between nominal interest rates and M1 velocity. Yet, most general‐equilibrium monetary models that have been used for empirical analysis have imposed cointegration between these two series. This paper presents as an alternative a money‐in‐the‐utility function model which does not imply cointegration even though a well‐defined stationary monetary equilibrium exists.     

Endogenous Money: An Analytical Approach

The paper proposes a constructive interpretation of the Post Keynesian debate between horizontalists and structuralists. Both approaches defend an endogenous money theory, but they discriminate between different analyses of the credit market and the reserve market. A more general model encompassing both approaches is presented here and some of its implications are discussed.     

Money,Trust, and Culture: Elements for an Institutional Approach to Money

The development gap between countries in tropical and temperate zones has been attributed to a variety of factors. Using data from the World Values Survey, we find that social norms about thrift, as opposed to sharing, vary with the length of the winter season. We also show that this cultural dimension “thrift versus sharing” and institutional quality both have an independent effect on contemporary economic outcomes. This suggests that the tropical development gap might be the consequence of deep-rooted effects of pre-industrial agro-climatic conditions on both the quality of institutions and social norms about thrift versus sharing that fostered development in the industrial era.     

Toward a General Theory of Credit and Money

Money is not a thing but a species of credit, and hence a social relation involving rights and obligations. It emerged as the most abstract species in the course of the general process of evolution of credit. Formulation of a theory of credit is, therefore, logically prior to any theory of money. A framework proposed along this line by Macleod, during the second half of the 19th century, has been neglected until now. Combined with Walras's numeraire and etalon concepts, this approach provides the foundation for a General Theory of Credit and Money, presented in this paper.     

The Presence of Multinational Banks and the Supply and Quality of Credit in Emerging Economies

Barriers to entry for multinational banks (MNBs) have been reduced in many countries. This paper studies the effect of the presence of MNBs on the supply and quality of credit in emerging economies. This study uses data from the Bank for International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund. The results indicate that the credit supply declines in response to increased competition from MNBs. However, the adverse effect of MNBs on the credit supply is less pronounced when the presence of MNBs is larger. The paper also provides some tentative results on the effect of MNBs on the quality of loans. The results suggest that banks shift their portfolios away from loans as a result of increased international financial competition, thereby reducing default risk, which is also reflected in a negative relationship between MNB presence and the chance of a banking crisis occurring.     

分权化改革对信用秩序的影响:一个转轨经济的视角

文章尝试采用演进主义的视角,从转轨经济改革过程中分权化的角度分析信用秩序.分权化改革,使政府作用结构发生了变异,地方利益的独立化及其与中央的博弈对金融资源的分配结构发生了深刻影响,信用格局分化为三元结构.与此同时,信用秩序的演进分别呈现"权力分配秩序--权力博弈秩序--市场竞争秩序"的特征,市场竞争下的信用秩序形成依赖于政府行为准则的确立.     

A Model of Money and Credit, with Application to the Credit Card Debt Puzzle

Many individuals simultaneously have significant credit card debt and money in the bank. The credit card debt puzzle is as follows: given high interest rates on credit cards and low rates on bank accounts, why not pay down debt? While some economists go to elaborate lengths to explain this, we argue it is a special case of the rate of return dominance puzzle from monetary economics. We extend standard monetary theory to incorporate consumer debt, which is interesting in its own right since developing models where money and credit coexist is a long-standing challenge. Our model is quite tractable—for example, it readily yields nice existence and characterization results—and helps put into context recent discussions of consumer debt.     

Credit Cards,Economization of Money,and Interest Rates

The quality of textbooks is not the problem in the introductory course. It is the failure to use as supplements books that reveal how economists think and approach issues. A short reading list is provided.     

The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America

This article argues that the business enterprise has evolved through successive stable organizational structures which correspond with instability for those falling outside its aegis. This is shown in the institutional and historical context of both managerial capitalism in the mid-twentieth century as well as the era of financialization that followed. Hence, the framework developed herein elaborates on the ceremonial characteristics of the business enterprise under money manager capitalism, and constitutes a contribution toward an updated going concern theory of the business enterprise.     

Enforcing the 1988 Basel Capital Requirements: Did it Curtail Bank Credit in Emerging Economies?

We examine whether the enforcement of bank capital asset requirements (CARs) curtailed the supply of credit in emerging economies. Preliminarily, we identify 16 emerging economies that – according to official and impartial reports – enforced the 1988 Basel standard during the 1990s. Then we perform our twofold econometric analysis. In the former part, we use macro data to test whether, controlling for economic fundamental variables, the enforcement brought about a slowdown in aggregate credit in these countries vis-a-vis other emerging economies. We find some support for our hypothesis. In the latter part, we employ individual bank data to better identify the 'capital crunch' effect of the enforcement. Here, we find that CAR enforcement – according to the 1988 Basel standard – significantly curtailed credit supply, particularly at less well-capitalized banks. The two empirical parts together suggest that the CAR enforcement did curtail aggregate credit in the examined emerging countries and that this result is rooted in the attempt by under-capitalized banks to reduce their loans. We argue that among developing countries – where banks are often the only source of financial intermediation – the positive effect of higher capital requirements, represented by the reduction of poor quality lending, may be offset by their negative impact on bank liquidity and on the level of economic activity. Hence, our results suggest that particular care is required to avoid potential negative macroeconomic effects when phasing in new and higher capital requirements in emerging economies.
(J.E.L.: G18, G21, G28)