International in scope and written by a leading young Post-Keynesian economist, this book focuses on the working of money and payments in a multi-bank settlement system within which banks and non-bank financial institutions have been expanding their operations outside their countries of incorporation.
Departing from conventionally held beliefs, Sergio Rossi sets off from a positive analysis of the logical origin of money, which is the essential principle of double-entry book-keeping through which banks record all debts and credits for further reference and settlement and provides theoretical and empirical advances in explaining money endogeneity for the investigation of contemporary domestic and international monetary issues.
Showing that both money and banking have profound implications for real economic activities, this innovative work is essential reading, not only for scholars in monetary economics, but also for professionals concerned with monetary policy and payments system issues.
CONTENTS
List of figures
List of tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1 Money and credit
The essence of money
The commodity theory of money: a critical appraisal
The chartalist theory of money: an analytical assessment
The mechanisms of credit
Banks and credit
Credit and production
Money and credit supply
Endogenous money and credit
2 Banks and payments
The monetary macroeconomics of banking
The dual function of banks
The meaning and purchasing power of bank deposits
The monetary macroeconomics of payments
Payments on the labour market
Payments on the financial market
Payments on the market for produced goods and services
3 The central bank and the state
The monetary macroeconomics of interbank payments
The characteristics and workings of the national payment system
The dual function of a central bank in domestic payment systems
The monetary macroeconomics of state payments
Some conceptual shortcomings in the state theory of money
The dual function of a central bank in state payments
4 International settlement systems
The current architecture for international payments
The lack of an international settlement institution
The lack of international money emissions
Reforming the international monetary architecture
The working of an international settlement institution
The working of international money emissions
5 Monetary policy strategies
Inflation theory and inflation targeting: a critical appraisal
Some conceptual and analytical shortcomings
Inflation in an endogenous money system
A structural target for monetary policy: payment systems’ reform
The required structural change in domestic payment systems
The operationalization of payment systems’ reform
Bibliography
Author index
Subject index
Biography
Sergio Rossi is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
