IRISSO). 1 We will concentrate on specifically economic theories of money, excluding approaches that are socioeconomic, sociological, anthropological and historical, as their use of empirical observation and methods of theorisation and analytical generalisation are appreciably different from those of economics in general.

No abstract

Abstract Although the literature has studied the role of the Federal Reserve as the global lender of last resort in 2007–09, many aspects of the Dollar Swap Lines to the European Central Bank need further exploration. Accordingly, we provide original evidence about the auction operations, allotted amounts and interest rates with regard to the Federal Reserve’s dollar swaps and the European Central Bank’s dollar provision. More specifically, we examine the demand side of the Dollar Swap Lines (whereas the existing literature mentions the supply side only) and we scrutinise the interest rate (whereas the literature concentrates on volumes) set by the Federal Reserve, and also the rate set by the European Central Bank. Our findings cast light on the nature of the relationship between the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. Finally, we contribute to the literature on the global lender of last resort by coining the notion of the financial dilemma, under the dollar system within a framework of globalised financial markets.

In his Lectures, Knut Wicksell ([1906] 1935, 172) assessed that the banking principle had been "a vague name for an essentially vague thing." This "vague" interpretation seemed to have taken a firm hold, for in the ensuing years much more attention was paid to the currency school. As a result, the literature on the mid-nineteenth-century British monetary debates has tended to undervalue the banking school's contribution to the theory of money and banking. Marion Daugherty (1943, 246) significantly claimed that "whereas it is easy to describe the Currency theory because it formed an intelligibly connected set of ideas, the banking school views were far from constituting a coherent or unified theory." Frank Fetter ([1965] 1978, 191) explained the "vagueness, if not inconsistency," by the fact that "the banking school was not trying to develop monetary theory for later generations." More recently, Denis O'Brien (1995, 66) restated that the currency school was "perfectly clear," whereas the banking school literature was deemed "a much more cloudy domain." Not surprisingly, the quantitative literature broadly reflects the "vague" or "cloudy" interpretation.By contrast, another literature mentions several banking principles and revisits most of them. In this respect, Jürg Niehans (1978, 1987) upholds a

No abstract