IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/reorpe/v50y2018i4p660-667.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Classical Political Economy and the Evolution of Central Banks: Endogenous Money and the Fiscal-Military State

Author

Listed:
  • Matías Vernengo

Abstract

The paper analyzes briefly the changing ideas on the role of money and banks from William Petty to Thomas Tooke, including the works of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. It analyzes the role of ideas in shaping the evolution of central bank regulation. Particular importance is given to the Bank of England’s inconvertibility period, from 1797 to 1821, and the ensuing debate in shaping Robert Peel’s Bank Act of 1844, which is often seen as the birth of modern central banking. The importance of the Say’s Law, and the inexistence of an alternative theory of the determination of output, is shown to play an essential role in the policy prescriptions of the so-called Bullionist authors, who won the debates that shaped central banking practices in the nineteenth century. The paper concludes with a brief analysis of what is a central bank according to the dominant (marginalist) mainstream of the profession, and what an alternative conception based on what may be termed classical-Keynesian political economy would be. JEL Classification: B10, N20, E58

Suggested Citation

  • Matías Vernengo, 2018. "Classical Political Economy and the Evolution of Central Banks: Endogenous Money and the Fiscal-Military State," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 50(4), pages 660-667, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:50:y:2018:i:4:p:660-667
    DOI: 10.1177/0486613418773754
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0486613418773754
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0486613418773754?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William N. Goetzmann, 2016. "Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10662.
    2. Monson,Andrew & Scheidel,Walter (ed.), 2015. "Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107089204.
    3. Andrianova, Svetlana & Demetriades, Panicos & Xu, Chenggang, 2011. "Political Economy Origins of Financial Markets in Europe and Asia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 686-699, May.
    4. Smith, Matthew, 2003. "On Central Banking “Rules†: Tooke's Critique of the Bank Charter Act of 1844," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 39-61, March.
    5. Fratianni, Michele & Spinelli, Franco, 2006. "Italian city-states and financial evolution," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(3), pages 257-278, December.
    6. Matías Vernengo, 2016. "Kicking Away the Ladder, Too: Inside Central Banks," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(2), pages 452-460, April.
    7. Charles Goodhart, 1988. "The Evolution of Central Banks," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262570734, December.
    8. Goodhart, C. A. E., 2011. "The changing role of central banks," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(2), pages 135-154, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lambert, Thomas, 2019. "Bankers as Immoral? The Parallels between Aquinas’s Views on Usury and Marxian Views of Banking and Credit," MPRA Paper 97741, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. van Eeghen, Piet-Hein, 2021. "Funding money-creating banks: Cash funding, balance sheet funding and the moral hazard of currency elasticity," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    2. Andrianova, Svetlana & Demetriades, Panicos & Xu, Chenggang, 2011. "Political Economy Origins of Financial Markets in Europe and Asia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 686-699, May.
    3. Donato Masciandaro & Davide Romelli, 2019. "Behavioral Monetary Policymaking: Economics, Political Economy and Psychology," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Behavioral Finance The Coming of Age, chapter 9, pages 285-329, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Stefano Ugolini, 2011. "What do we really know about the long-term evolution of central banking? Evidence from the past, insights for the present," Working Paper 2011/15, Norges Bank.
    5. Alberto Giovannini, 1990. "European Monetary Reform: Progress and Prospects," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 21(2), pages 217-292.
    6. Robert M. Rosenswig, 2024. "Understanding money; Or, why social and financial accounting should not be conflated," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(1), pages 71-86, January.
    7. Philipp Bagus & David Howden, 2016. "The economic and legal significance of “full” deposit availability," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 243-254, February.
    8. MARTÍNEZ-RUIZ, Elena & NOGUES-MARCO, Pilar, 2018. "The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Stability During the Gold Standard. Spain 1874—1914," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-75, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    9. Mark Flannery, 2001. "The Faces of “Market Discipline”," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 20(2), pages 107-119, October.
    10. Sonin, Isaac M. & Whitmeyer, Mark, 2020. "Some nontrivial properties of a formula for compound interest," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 33(C).
    11. Bryan Caplan & Edward Stringham, 2003. "Networks, Law, and the Paradox of Cooperation," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 16(4), pages 309-326, December.
    12. Piotr Ciżkowicz & Andrzej Rzońca & Andrzej Torój, 2019. "In Search of an Appropriate Lower Bound. The Zero Lower Bound vs. the Positive Lower Bound under Discretion and Commitment," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 20(4), pages 1028-1053, November.
    13. Donato Masciandaro, 1995. "Designing a central bank: Social player, monetary agent, or banking agent?," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 399-410, October.
    14. Alfred Duncan & Charles Nolan, 2020. "Reform of the UK Financial Policy Committee," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 67(1), pages 1-30, February.
    15. Luis Angeles, 2020. "Four Phases in the History of Money," Working Papers 2020_24, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    16. Vincent Bignon & Marc Flandreau & Stefano Ugolini, 2012. "Bagehot for beginners: the making of lender‐of‐last‐resort operations in the mid‐nineteenth century," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 65(2), pages 580-608, May.
    17. Jean-Pierre Allegret & Sana Azzabi, 2014. "Intégration financière internationale et croissance économique dans les pays émergents et en développement : le canal du développement financier," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 22(3), pages 27-68.
    18. Antoine Martin, 2005. "Reconciling Bagehot with the Fed's response to September 11," Staff Reports 217, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    19. Laurent Le Maux, 2004. "L'émergence d'une banque supérieure sous le régime de la liberté bancaire," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 70(2), pages 193-221.
    20. Gabriel Jiménez & Steven Ongena & José‐Luis Peydró & Jesús Saurina, 2014. "Hazardous Times for Monetary Policy: What Do Twenty‐Three Million Bank Loans Say About the Effects of Monetary Policy on Credit Risk‐Taking?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(2), pages 463-505, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    history of thought; economic history; central bank policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B10 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - General
    • N20 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:50:y:2018:i:4:p:660-667. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.urpe.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.