Money and inflation in Switzerland

This paper characterizes the relationship between monetary aggregates, inflation and economic activity in Switzerland since the mid-1970s. Traditional forms of money demand and quantity theory relationships have remained stable over the whole period. Broad money excesses over trend values, accounting for a secular decline in interest rates and thus in trend velocity, have been followed by persistently higher inflation and output with the usual monetary policy transmission lags. Money and exchange rate fluctuations can explain the major inflation developments in Switzerland over the past four decades.

Central banks and inflation: where do we stand and how did we get here?

The inability of central banks to attain their target inflation rates in recent years has raised questions about the extent to which central banks can control the inflation process. This paper discusses the evolution of thought and evidence since the 1960s on the determinants of inflation and the role that should be played by central banks. The paper highlights the roles played by two streams of thought associated with Milton Friedman: monetarist theories predicting a key role for monetary aggregates in determining inflation and the rise in popularity of the expectations-augmented Phillips curve. The author discusses the influence of the latter in determining the modern consensus on central-bank institutions and the relative roles for fiscal and monetary policies. The paper concludes with a discussion of macroeconomic developments since 2010 and current policy options to stimulate the economy and restore inflation to its target levels, including the merits of ‘helicopter money’.

E-Banking and Monetary Policy in Nigeria

The goal of this paper is to assess the impact of e-banking, which are distinct from conventional banking systems, on central banks’ monetary policy. E-banking poses a challenge to central banks’ ability to control interest rates and it may also increase endogenous financial instability. The challenge to interest rate control stems from the possibility that e-banking may diminish the financial system’s demand for central bank liability, rendering central banks unable to conduct meaningful open market operations. Increased financial instability could emerge from the increased elasticity of private money production and from the periodic runs out of e-banking into central bank money that generates liquidity crises. Similarly, the future of e-banking is dependent on its growth, regulation and increased technological advancements that would boost the security of the new instrument. It will directly impact the central bank’s control of monetary policy unless it is included in its measurements of monetary aggregates. We therefore recommend that since the impact of e-banking on monetary policy depends solely on how fast it will spread and the extent to which it will substitute for cash, it is vital that Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) considers taking steps to compensate the resulting decrease in its balance sheet. Also, CBN must have to impose special obligations with the money reserve on the e-banking issuer in case of any large increase in e-banking creativity that will affect the monetary policy at the end. The government must keep the rate of prices stable and with this condition, where e-banking will be equal to other forms of money which maintain by apportion percentage as a reserve ratio to the central bank. Similarly, if e-banking spreads moderately, there will be a decrease in the seigniorage income and thus, the decrease in the balance sheet of CBN will be limited. Hence, it must include e-banking in monetary aggregates that the spread of e-banking may lead to a change in the velocity of money. Keywords: monetary policy, e-banking, technology, velocity of money

Constructing Divisia Monetary Aggregates for Singapore

Since Barnett derived the user cost price of money, the economic theory of monetary services aggregation has been developed and extended into a field of its own with solid foundations in microeconomic theory. Divisia monetary aggregates have repeatedly been shown to be strictly preferable to their simple sum counterparts, which have no competent foundations in microeconomic aggregation or index number theory. However, most central banks in the world, including that of Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), still report their monetary aggregates as simple summations. Recent macroeconomic research about Singapore tends to focus on exchange rates as a monetary policy target but ignores the aggregate quantity of money. Is that because quantities of money are irrelevant to economic activity? To examine the role of monetary quantities as potential monetary instruments, indicators, or targets and their relevance to predicting real economic activity in Singapore, this paper applies the user cost of money formula and the recently developed credit-card-augmented Divisia monetary aggregates formula to construct monetary services indexes for Singapore. We produce those state-of-the-art monetary services indexes from Jan 1991 to Mar 2021. We see that Divisia measures behave differently from simple sum measures in the period before the year 2000, while interest rates were high. Credit-card-augmented Divisia monetary services move closely with the conventional Divisia monetary aggregates, since the volume of credit card transactions in Singapore is relatively small compared with other monetary service assets. In future work, we plan to use our data to explore central bank policy in Singapore and to propose improvements in that policy. By making our data available to the public, we encourage others to do the same.