CHAPTER 4: THE MONETARY SYSTEM: WHAT IS IT AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
- The two arms of macroeconomics policy are monetary and fiscal policy
- Fiscal policy – governments decisions about spending and taxation; made of elected
representatives
- Monetary policy – decisions about the nation’s system of coin, currency and banking; made
by central banks
WHAT IS MONEY?
- Money does not refer to all wealth, but only one type of it
- Money – the stock of assets that can be readily used to make transactions
FUNCTIONS OF MONEY
- Money has three purposes
o A store of value
A way to transfer purchasing power from the present to the future
Money is not a perfect store value: if the prices are rising, the amount you
can buy with any given quantity of money is failing
o Unit of account
Provides the terms in which prices are quoted and debt are recorded
The price of goods relative to other goods
o A medium of exchange
Used to buy goods and services
The medium of exchange is used to buy other things – goods and services –
is sometimes called the asset’s liquidity
It is the economy’s most liquid asset
- To better understand the functions of money, try to imagine an economy without it -> a
barter economy
- This economy’s trade requires the double coincidence of wants -> the unlikely
happenstances of two people each having goods that the other want at the right time and
place to make an exchange
- A barter economy permits only simple transactions
TYPES OF MONEY
- Money that has no instructive value -> fiat money
- Established as money by government decree, or fiat
- Most societies in the past have used a commodity with some intrinsic value of money –
called commodity money
- An example is gold, if the economy used gold as a currency, the economy is said to be on a
gold standard
- Gold is a form of commodity money because it can be used for various purposes – jewellery,
dental fillings and so on – as well as for transactions
Development of flat money
- Any society, no matter how primitive, some form of commodity money arises to facilitate
exchange: people are willing to accept a commodity currency such as gold because it has
intrinsic value
, - To understand the development of commodity money to fiat money – imagine an economy
where people carried bags of gold
- To buy something, an agreement on the weight of the gold is agreed upon, and the sale is
made
- Government might get involved in the monetary system to help people reduce transaction
costs
- To reduce these costs, the government can mint gold coin of known purity and weight
- Next step – government accepts gold from the public in exchange for gold certificates ->
promise to be able to redeem quantity of gold
- Then, eventually, bills were created to represent the value of itself
- Finally, the gold backing becomes irrelevant – no one redeems gold because it’s irrelevant
- Thus, the system of commodity money evolves into a system of fiat money
HOW THE QUANTITY OF MONEY IS CONTROLLED
- Quantity of money available in an economy is called the money supply
- The government controls the supply of money: legal restrictions give the government a
monopoly on the printing of money
- Government’s control over the money supply is called monetary policy
- Monetary policy is delegated to a partially independent institution called central bank
- The central bank of SA is the south African reserve bank
- Decisions about the monetary policy are made by a committee
- This committee consist of two groups:
o Members are appointed by the president are confirmed by congress
o President of the regional banks are chosen by these banks’ board of directors
- Primary way in which the central bank controls the supply of money is through open-market
operations
- Conversely, when the central bank wants decrease the money supply, it sells some
government bonds from its own portfolio
HOW THE QUALITY OF MONEY IS MEASURED
- Goals are to determine the money supply affects the economy
- Because money is the stock of assets used for transactions, the quantity of money is the
quantity of those assets
- The most obvious assets to include in the quantity of money is currency
- Second type of assets used for transactions is demand deposits – funds people hold in their
checking accounts
- Demand deposits are therefore added currency when measuring the quantity of money
- Money market mutual funds allow investors to write cheques against their accounts,
although restrictions sometimes apply with regard to the size of the cheque or the number
of checks written
- Assets should be included in the money stock, more than one measure is available
M1, M2, M3
- M1, M2, M3 are all measures of money supply, the amount of money in circulation at a
given time
- M1, also called narrow money, normally include coins and notes in circulation and other
money equivalents that are easily convertible into cash
Voordelen van het kopen van samenvattingen bij Stuvia op een rij:
Verzekerd van kwaliteit door reviews
Stuvia-klanten hebben meer dan 700.000 samenvattingen beoordeeld. Zo weet je zeker dat je de beste documenten koopt!
Snel en makkelijk kopen
Je betaalt supersnel en eenmalig met iDeal, creditcard of Stuvia-tegoed voor de samenvatting. Zonder lidmaatschap.
Focus op de essentie
Samenvattingen worden geschreven voor en door anderen. Daarom zijn de samenvattingen altijd betrouwbaar en actueel. Zo kom je snel tot de kern!
Veelgestelde vragen
Wat krijg ik als ik dit document koop?
Je krijgt een PDF, die direct beschikbaar is na je aankoop. Het gekochte document is altijd, overal en oneindig toegankelijk via je profiel.
Tevredenheidsgarantie: hoe werkt dat?
Onze tevredenheidsgarantie zorgt ervoor dat je altijd een studiedocument vindt dat goed bij je past. Je vult een formulier in en onze klantenservice regelt de rest.
Van wie koop ik deze samenvatting?
Stuvia is een marktplaats, je koop dit document dus niet van ons, maar van verkoper nf1. Stuvia faciliteert de betaling aan de verkoper.
Zit ik meteen vast aan een abonnement?
Nee, je koopt alleen deze samenvatting voor €4,38. Je zit daarna nergens aan vast.