1991 Articles

Towards a Reformulation of Monetary Theory: Competitive Banking

Stiglitz, Joseph E.; Greenwald, Bruce C.

This paper, after providing a critique of standard monetary theory based on the transactions demand for money, examines the effect of monetary policy (changes in reserve requires and open market operations) in a model with competitive, risk averse banks. The effects of changes in bank net worth and bank's risk perceptions are also analyzed. In deep recessions, monetary policy may be ineffective because banks are unwilling to lend. The effects of monetary policy are, at most, only partially mediated through changes in the interest rate. The implications for traditional IS-LM analysis are briefly noted.