IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/78896.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Privately issued money reduces GDP

Author

Listed:
  • Musgrave, Ralph S.

Abstract

The majority of the money supply is issued by private banks, not central banks. However a system that restricts money creation to central banks has been advocated for many years by leading economists. There is no reason interest rates would not be at some sort of genuine free market rate under the latter system. In contrast, when private bank money is allowed, those banks undercut the free market rate of interest because it costs them nothing to come by the money they lend out: they effectively just print it, much as counterfeiters print money. The result is a sub-optimum or “non GDP maximising” rate of interest and an above optimum amount of debt. An additional misallocation of resources is that if private corporations are to be allowed to create money, there is no good reason why money lenders (i.e. private banks) should be allowed to do that and not car manufacturers or any other set of corporations. I.e. a second reason why letting private banks create money misallocates resources and reduces GDP is that different types of corporation do not compete on a level playing field. In contrast, the field is level if only central banks create money.

Suggested Citation

  • Musgrave, Ralph S., 2017. "Privately issued money reduces GDP," MPRA Paper 78896, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:78896
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/78896/1/MPRA_paper_78896.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Miles & Jing Yang & Gilberto Marcheggiano, 2013. "Optimal Bank Capital," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 123(567), pages 1-37, March.
    2. James Tobin, 1987. "The case for preserving regulatory distinctions," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 167-205.
    3. Douglas W. Diamond & Raghuram G. Rajan, 2001. "Liquidity Risk, Liquidity Creation, and Financial Fragility: A Theory of Banking," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(2), pages 287-327, April.
    4. Anat Admati & Martin Hellwig, 2013. "The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9929.
    5. McLeay, Michael & Radia, Amar & Thomas, Ryland, 2014. "Money creation in the modern economy," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 54(1), pages 14-27.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Behn, Markus & Daminato, Claudio & Salleo, Carmelo, 2019. "A dynamic model of bank behaviour under multiple regulatory constraints," Working Paper Series 2233, European Central Bank.
    2. Fidrmuc, Jarko & Lind, Ronja, 2020. "Macroeconomic impact of Basel III: Evidence from a meta-analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    3. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Niepelt, Dirk, 2019. "On the equivalence of private and public money," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 27-41.
    4. Goodhart, Charles, 2013. "Ratio controls need reconsideration," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 445-450.
    5. Abbassi, Puriya & Iyer, Rajkamal & Peydró, José-Luis & Tous, Francesc R., 2016. "Securities trading by banks and credit supply: Micro-evidence from the crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(3), pages 569-594.
    6. Georg Junge & Peter Kugler, 2018. "Optimal equity capital requirements for large Swiss banks," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 154(1), pages 1-21, December.
    7. Musgrave, Ralph S., 2018. "A new justification for full reserve banking?," MPRA Paper 90041, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Gabriel Jiménez & Steven Ongena & José-Luis Peydró & Jesús Saurina, 2017. "Macroprudential Policy, Countercyclical Bank Capital Buffers, and Credit Supply: Evidence from the Spanish Dynamic Provisioning Experiments," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(6), pages 2126-2177.
    9. Jokivuolle, Esa & Keppo, Jussi, 2014. "Bankers' compensation: Sprint swimming in short bonus pools?," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 2/2014, Bank of Finland.
    10. Sebastian Strunz & Bartosz Bartkowski & Harry Schindler, 2017. "Is there a monetary growth imperative?," Chapters, in: Peter A. Victor & Brett Dolter (ed.), Handbook on Growth and Sustainability, chapter 15, pages 326-355, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Jens Dick‐Nielsen & Jacob Gyntelberg & Christoffer Thimsen, 2022. "The Cost of Capital for Banks: Evidence from Analyst Earnings Forecasts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(5), pages 2577-2611, October.
    12. Goldstein, Itay & Razin, Assaf, 2015. "Three Branches of Theories of Financial Crises," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 10(2), pages 113-180, 30.
    13. Iyer, Rajkamal & Peydró, José-Luis & Abbassi, Puriya & Tous, Francesc, 2015. "Securities Trading by Banks and Credit Supply: Micro-Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 10480, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Barth, James R. & Miller, Stephen Matteo, 2018. "Benefits and costs of a higher bank “leverage ratio”," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 37-52.
    15. Jenter, Dirk & Aldunate, Felipe & Korteweg, Arthur & Koudijs, Peter, 2021. "Shareholder Liability and Bank Failure," CEPR Discussion Papers 16309, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Raghuram G. Rajan, 2018. "Whither Bank Regulation: Current Debates and Challenges," IMES Discussion Paper Series 18-E-09, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    17. Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde & Daniel Sanches & Linda Schilling & Harald Uhlig, 2021. "Central Bank Digital Currency: Central Banking For All?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 41, pages 225-242, July.
    18. Diamond, D.W. & Kashyap, A.K., 2016. "Liquidity Requirements, Liquidity Choice, and Financial Stability," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2263-2303, Elsevier.
    19. Kumhof, Michael & Wang, Xuan, 2021. "Banks, money, and the zero lower bound on deposit rates," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    20. Butzbach Olivier & von Mettenheim Kurt E., 2015. "Alternative Banking and Theory," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 105-171, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bank; money; money creation; counterfeit; central bank.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E51 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Money Supply; Credit; Money Multipliers
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:78896. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.