Determinants of Money Demand: An Empirical Examination

Abstract

Tremendous changes have been witnessed in the developing countries' macroeconomic landscape over the past few decades. For instance, several forms of financial innovations have been witnessed in the sub-Saharan African region over the past decades. These changes can shift various parameters of the money demand model and function. However, few empirical studies have been carried out in this scope in East Africa. It is against this backdrop that this study will employ the panel estimation technique to analyse the major determinants for money demand in East Africa for the period 2007 to 2020. The study will consider mobile money transactions, ATMs, inflation, interest rates and economic growth variables. The result of the pooled ordinary least squares estimator has identified mobile money, ATMs, and economic growth has a positive influence on money demand while interest rates negatively influence the money demand function. The result has identified the role of monetary authorities and policymakers in controlling use of mobile money, ATMs, income and interest rates to grow money demand in East African economies.