In the paper, an analogy with length measurement is applied in order to explore the nature of the unit for value measurement, i.e. the unit of account. As the meter is defined as the length traveled by light in vacuum during 1/299 792 458 of a second, the unit of account krona is defined as the...

After World War II and prior to the financial deregulation of the 1980s, monetary policy in Sweden as well as in other western European countries rested chiefly on a system of far-reaching non-market-oriented controls of credit flows and interest rates. How was monetary policy conducted in such...

In this paper, a unique event is studied: the opening of Bank of Canada in 1935, the central bank note issuance monopoly and its impact on the note issuing chartered banks. Between 1935-1950, Canadian chartered banks had to gradually withdraw their notes from circulation. In a...

This paper begins by defining, and distinguishing between, money and finance, and addresses alternative ways of financing spending. We next examine the role played by financial institutions (e.g., banks) in the provision of finance. The role of government as both regulator of private...

In this paper I first provide an overview of alternative approaches to money, contrasting the orthodox approach, in which money is neutral, at least in the long run; and the Marx-Veblen-Keynes approach, or the monetary theory of production. I then focus in more detail on two main categories: the...

This paper examines the causes and consequences of the current global financial crisis. It largely relies on the work of Hyman Minsky, although analyses by John Kenneth Galbraith and Thorstein Veblen of the causes of the 1930s collapse are used to show similarities between the two crises. K.W....

The ongoing financial crisis is shaking central bankers' certainties about their mission, and a rethinking of such mission can greatly benefit from a non-finalistic reassessment of how central banking has evolved over the centuries. This paper does so by taking a functional, instead of an...

Fractional reserve regimes generate fragile banking, and full reserve regimes (e.g., narrow banking) remove fragility at the cost of suppressing the role of banks as lenders. A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) could provide safe money, but at the cost of potentially disrupting bank lending....

We integrate an overlapping generations model into a new monetarist framework and show that the Friedman rule is not optimal. This is because inflation makes saving for retirement less attractive, such that young agents optimally choose to increase their consumption at the expense of lower...

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model to analyze the relationship between monetary policy, money demand, and unemployment. Our model succeeds in replicating the empirical fact of a downward sloping Phillips curve for low inflation rates and an upward sloping curve for high inflation...