Everybody uses money every day, but we rarely stop to think about how money works. In this book, scholars from different disciplines seek to answer that question; from historians to economists, sociologists, a philosopher and a physicist. Money works as a social construction because we have mutual expectations that support its use – despite the seeming irrationality of trading valuable things or doing strenuous work for pieces of paper or numbers in accounts. Recently, there has been a revival of interest in monetary theory, not least because the impacts of globalizing markets and of new communication and information technologies have changed the forms of money. The deep crisis of the financial system has demonstrated the importance of a functioning monetary system and although renewed interest in this has led to significant contributions in various fields, it remains true that no social science discipline on its own is sufficiently equipped to explain the basic workings of monetary systems, their rapid innovation and their effects on social, economic and political structures. The contributors to this book report on their latest research on the origins of money, on the nature of monetary transactions, on money and the state, and on the role of money and finance in the recent global crisis. They show how established theories of money and the policies guided by these theories went wrong. This collection will be a valuable resource for students and researchers seeking a deeper understanding of money.

An overview of recent theoretical and policy-related developments in monetary economics.

This book provides a new methodological approach to money and macroeconomics. Realizing that the abstract equilibrium models lacked descriptions of fundamental issues of a modern monetary economy, the focus of this book lies on the (stylized) balance sheets of the main actors. Money, after all, is born on the balance sheets of the central bank or commercial bank. While households and firms hold accounts at banks with deposits, banks hold an account at the central bank where deposits are called reserves. The book aims to explain how the two monetary circuits – central bank deposits and bank deposits – are intertwined. It is also shown how government spending injects money into the economy. Modern Monetary Theory and European Macroeconomics covers both the general case and then the Eurozone specifically. A very simple macroeconomic model follows which explains the major accounting identities of macroeconomics. Using this new methodology, the Eurozone crisis is examined from a fresh perspective. It turns out that not government debt but the stagnation of private sector debt was the major economic problem and that cuts in government spending worsened the economic situation. The concluding chapters discuss what a solution to the current problems of the Eurozone must look like, with scenarios that examine a future with and without a euro. This book provides a detailed balance sheet view of monetary and fiscal operations, with a focus on the Eurozone economy. Students, policy-makers and financial market actors will learn to assess the institutional processes that underpin a modern monetary economy, in times of boom and in times of bust.

This second edition explores how money 'works' in the modern economy and synthesises the key principles of Modern Money Theory, exploring macro accounting, currency regimes and exchange rates in both the USA and developing nations.

A New York Times Bestseller The leading thinker and most visible public advocate of modern monetary theory -- the freshest and most important idea about economics in decades -- delivers a radically different, bold, new understanding for how to build a just and prosperous society. Stephanie Kelton's brilliant exploration of modern monetary theory (MMT) dramatically changes our understanding of how we can best deal with crucial issues ranging from poverty and inequality to creating jobs, expanding health care coverage, climate change, and building resilient infrastructure. Any ambitious proposal, however, inevitably runs into the buzz saw of how to find the money to pay for it, rooted in myths about deficits that are hobbling us as a country. Kelton busts through the myths that prevent us from taking action: that the federal government should budget like a household, that deficits will harm the next generation, crowd out private investment, and undermine long-term growth, and that entitlements are propelling us toward a grave fiscal crisis. MMT, as Kelton shows, shifts the terrain from narrow budgetary questions to one of broader economic and social benefits. With its important new ways of understanding money, taxes, and the critical role of deficit spending, MMT redefines how to responsibly use our resources so that we can maximize our potential as a society. MMT gives us the power to imagine a new politics and a new economy and move from a narrative of scarcity to one of opportunity.

With the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, any pretense of a connection of the world's currencies to any real commodity has been abandoned. Yet since the 1980s, most central banks have abandoned money-growth targets as practical guidelines for monetary policy as well. How then can pure "fiat" currencies be managed so as to create confidence in the stability of national units of account? Interest and Prices seeks to provide theoretical foundations for a rule-based approach to monetary policy suitable for a world of instant communications and ever more efficient financial markets. In such a world, effective monetary policy requires that central banks construct a conscious and articulate account of what they are doing. Michael Woodford reexamines the foundations of monetary economics, and shows how interest-rate policy can be used to achieve an inflation target in the absence of either commodity backing or control of a monetary aggregate. The book further shows how the tools of modern macroeconomic theory can be used to design an optimal inflation-targeting regime--one that balances stabilization goals with the pursuit of price stability in a way that is grounded in an explicit welfare analysis, and that takes account of the "New Classical" critique of traditional policy evaluation exercises. It thus argues that rule-based policymaking need not mean adherence to a rigid framework unrelated to stabilization objectives for the sake of credibility, while at the same time showing the advantages of rule-based over purely discretionary policymaking.

Empirical evidence on money, prices, and output -- Money-in-the-utility function -- Money and transactions -- Money and public finance -- Money in the short run : informational and portfolio rigidities -- Money in the short run : nominal price and wage rigidities -- Discretionary policy and time inconsistency -- New keynesian monetary economics -- Money and the open economy -- Financial markets and monetary policy -- Monetary policy and operating procedures.

Robert Lucas is one of the outstanding monetary theorists of the past hundred years. Along with Knut Wicksell, Irving Fisher, John Maynard Keynes, James Tobin, and Milton Friedman (his teacher), Lucas revolutionized our understanding of how money interacts with the real economy of production, consumption, and exchange. Lucas’s contributions are both methodological and substantive. Methodologically, he developed dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium models to analyze economic decision-makers operating through time in a complex, probabilistic environment. Substantively, he incorporated the quantity theory of money into these models and derived its implications for money growth, inflation, and interest rates in the long run. He also showed the different effects of anticipated and unanticipated changes in the stock of money on economic fluctuations, and helped to demonstrate that there was not a long-run trade-off between unemployment and inflation (the Phillips curve) that policy-makers could exploit. The twenty-one papers collected in this volume fall primarily into three categories: core monetary theory and public finance, asset pricing, and the real effects of monetary instability. Published between 1972 and 2007, they will inspire students and researchers who want to study the work of a master of economic modeling and to advance economics as a pure and applied science.

This textbook provides an introduction to modern monetary economics for advanced undergraduates, highlighting the lessons learned from the recent financial crisis. The book presents both the core New Keynesian model and recent advances, taking into account financial frictions, and discusses recent research on an intuitive level based on simple static and two-period models, but also prepares readers for an extension to a truly dynamic analysis. Further, it offers a systematic perspective on monetary policy, covering a wide range of models to help readers gain a better understanding of controversial issues. Part I examines the long-run perspective, addressing classical monetary policy issues such as determination of the price level and interaction between monetary and fiscal policy. Part II introduces the core New Keynesian model, characterizing optimal monetary policy to stabilize short-term shocks. It discusses rules vs. discretion and the challenges arising from control errors, imperfect information and robustness issues. It also analyzes optimal control in the presence of an effective lower bound. Part III focuses on modelling financial frictions. It identifies the transmission mechanisms of monetary policy via banking and introduces models with incomplete markets, principal-agent problems, maturity mismatch and leverage cycles, to show why investors’ and intermediaries’ own stakes play a key role in lending with pro-cyclical features. In addition, it presents a tractable model for handling liquidity management and demonstrates that the need to sell assets in crisis amplifies the volatility of the real economy. Lastly, the book discusses the relation between monetary policy and financial stability, addressing systemic risk and the role of macro-prudential regulation.

The international monetary system, and the disparate systems that make it up, are complex and there are many fallacies surrounding the ways in which they work. This book provides a clear and rigorous understanding of these systems and their possible consequences.