Intertemporal discoordination in the 100% reserve banking system

The 100%-Money plan advocated by Fisher (1936) has a Misesian flavor as it aims at mitigating intertemporal discoordination by reducing (i) the discrepancy between investment and voluntary savings, and (ii) the manipula­ tion of interest rates by monetary injections. Recent proposals to adopt the 100% reserve banking system, such as the Chicago Plan Revisited by Benes and Kumhof (2013) or the Limited Purpose Banking by Kotlikoff (2010), take, however, a fundamentally different attitude towards the role of the central bank in the credit market and ignore that intertemporal discoordination arises inde­ pendently from whether the credit expansion is financed by the creation of outside or inside money. These plans allow the central bank to inject outside money into the credit market and to effectively lower interest rates in negative territory in order to overcome the limit that the liquidity trap sets to credit expan­ sion in the fractional reserve system. Although such an attempt may succeed in stimulating the economy in the short run, it exacerbates intertemporal discoor­ dination and weakens economic stability in the long run. Key words: monetary systems, 100% reserve banking, Chicago Plan, Austrian Business Cycle Theory. JEL Classification: E30, E42, E58, B53. Resumen: El plan «dinero 100%» defendido por Fisher (1936) tiene connotacio­ nes misianas en el sentido en que tiene como objetivo mitigar la descoordinación intertemporal reduciendo (i) la diferencia entre la inversión y el ahorro voluntario y (ii) la manipulación de los tipos de interés a través de inyecciones de dinero. Las recientes propuestas para adoptar un sistema de coficiente de reservas ban­ carias del 100%, tales como el Chicago Plan Revisited de Benes y Kumhof (2013) o el Limited Purpose Banking de Kotlikoff (2010), toman, sin embargo, una actitud esencialmente diferente hacia el papel del banco central en el mercado de cré­ dito, e ignora que la descoordinación intertemporal surge independientemente de si la expansión crediticia se financia mediante la creación de dinero desde dentro (inside money) o fuera (outside money). Estos planes permiten al banco central inyectar dinero desde fuera en el mercado de crédito y reducir los tipos de interés de manera efectiva en valores negativos con el fin de superar el límite que establece la trampa de la liquidez a la expansión del crédito en el sistema de reserva fraccionaria. Aunque tal intento puede tener éxito a la hora de esti­ mular la economía en el corto plazo, acentúa la descoordinación intertemporal y debilita la estabilidad económica a largo plazo. Palabras clave: Sistemas monetarios, banca de reserva del 100%, Plan Chica­ go, teoría austriaca del ciclo económico. Clasificación JEL: E30, E42, E58, B53.

Sustainable debt

We show that debt is sustainable at a competitive equilibrium based solely on the reputation for repayment; that is, even without collateral or legal sanctions available to creditors. In an incomplete asset market, when the rate of interest falls recurrently below the rate of growth of the economy, self‐insurance is more costly than borrowing, and repayments on loans are enforced by the implicit threat of loss of the risk‐sharing advantages of debt contracts. Private debt credibly circulates as a form of inside money, and it is not valued as a speculative bubble. Competitive equilibria with self‐enforcing debt exist under a suitable hypothesis of gains from trade.

FINANCIAL FIRM PRODUCTION OF INSIDE MONETARY AND CREDIT CARD SERVICES: AN AGGREGATION THEORETIC APPROACH

A monetary production model of financial firms is employed to investigate supply-side inside-money aggregation, augmented to include credit card transaction services. Inside money is a supply-side concept. Financial firms are conceived to produce monetary and credit card transaction services as outputs through financial intermediation. While credit cards provide transactions services, credit cards have never been included into measures of the money supply. The reason is accounting conventions, which do not permit adding liabilities to assets. However, index number theory measures service flows and is based on microeconomic aggregation theory, not accounting. We derive theory needed to measure the supply of the joint services of credit cards and inside money, needed to estimate the output supply function and to compute value added. The data needed for empirical implementation of our theory are available online from the Center for Financial Stability in New York City.