Since the 1960s, Tobin has set himself the objective of developing a macroeconomic model more general than that specified by Keynes in the General Theory. In his work, he explicitely deals with financial intermediaries and elaborates a 'new view' which, in contrast with the 'old view', maintains that there are no reasons to attribute a special role to the banks. This paper critically analyses Tobin's theory and shows that this theory overlooks an important function of banks highlighted by Keynes, and that the specification of this banks' function is the necessary condition to highlight the most significant aspects of what Keynes calls a monetary economy. These points enable us to draw some observations about the question of the financial system regulation
Contemporary monetary theory is characterized by the predominance of the monetarist thesis. Paradoxically, the widespread acceptance of the monetarists' conclusions has coincided with the disappearance of the stable relation between money stock and nominal income from the 1980s onwards. These results did not call the monetarist theory into question, but instead stimulated the elaboration of various proposals for the modi®cation of the monetary authorities' operative schemes. Each of these proposals gives rise to some perplexity. These anomalies provide the justi®cation for this paper, which sets out to analyse the characteristics of the money supply endogeneity theory, a theoretical approach initiated in the 1970s thanks to Kaldor's seminal contribution, with the objective of demonstrating the inconsistencies in the monetarists' conclusions. It is intended to show that the debate on the endogeneity theory developed by the postKeynesians has overlooked an essential aspect of Kaldor's theory, the examination of which permits: (a) the elaboration of an important criticism of monetarism; and (b) the development of a theory of credit and of ®nancial intermediaries that highlights elements of Keynes's theory that have been neglected by the traditional interpretation.
This paper describes the features of a monetary economy on the basis of Keynes's distinction between a real exchange economy and a monetary economy. In The General Theory, Keynes identifies the reasons for the non-neutrality of money by highlighting the store of wealth function of money; this approach has been adopted by most Keynesian economists. The aim of this paper is to show that such an approach only partially explains the reasons for money non-neutrality and that important elements which demonstrate the relevance of monetary variables emerge when the means of payment function of money is considered. Investigating the role of this function requires that we deal explicitly with how spending decisions are financed. The paper argues that the market for credit must be considered separately from the market for money, and that a viable credit theory can be built from Keynes's post-General Theory writings.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.