Money as a medium of exchange and monetary growth in an underdevelopment context

This paper constructs a neoclassical monetary growth model applicable to less developed economies, in that (1) the economy is assumed to be labour-surplus (as a result of which its steady-state growth rate is an endogenous variable), and (2) differential savings propensities on the part of profit- and wage-earners are postulated. The model predicts that an increase in the rate of monetary expansion increases the steady-state rate of inflation, increases the capital-labour ratio, reduces the money-labour ratio, and reduces the steady-state growth rate. Because of this last-mentioned fact, an inflationary policy is held to be unfavorable to economic development, despite the fact that it increases the capital-labour ratio. Some implications of the analysis for the well-known ‘choice of techniques’ problem are also discussed.