A model of parallel currencies under free exchange rates

Money is one of the most studied and truly complex phenomena in Economics. How money is created? And how is it destroyed? ‘What constitutes money and what doesn’t? Is money only the means of payment sanctioned by law, by the State? In our current monetary systems, can we ‘create’ as much as money as we like? If so, wouldn’t it be inflationary? These are some of the questions Economics students frequently ask at the start their degrees. Today I am only going to focus, if only timidly, on one of them; the absence of competition in the national currencies markets in our days. Of course, the absence of competition in this market is not the result of the application of the conventional laws of Economics; quite the opposite, as masterly explained by Vera Smith in her ‘Rationale of Central Banking and the Free Banking Alternative’ in 1936, the granting of the legal tender clause to a single currency, that issued by the State, has been an explicit decision made by the government (the relation between the State and the central bank has always been problematic to say the least, you can find more details on it here). F. Hayek also explains marvellously the abolishment of the laws of Economics as regards money in his ‘Denationalisation of Money’ in 1976. More recently, my colleague from the Institute of International Monetary Research (IIMR), Tim Congdon, discussed this issue in his ‘Money in a Free Society’ in 2009 and makes the case for a privatised and truly independent central bank, detached from the political agenda or the economic needs of the government.

Following this debate, two colleagues of mine, Pedro Schwartz and Sebastian Damrich, and myself have reflected on these issues in a working paper just published by the Applied Economics Centre of the John Hopkins University (‘A model of parallel currencies under free floating exchange rates’. In Studies in Applied Economics, Num. 160, June 2020). In the paper we assess the feasibility of a parallel currency system under different macroeconomic scenarios. We first offer the rationale for the introduction of more competition in this market and then develop a model to see wether (and under which conditions) a parallel currency system ends up in the running of a single currency economy, or rather in two currencies competing for the market. We draw policy implications and use the the eurozone as a case-study, but the model could well be applied to any other set of countries sharing a currency or willing to access a different currency area. In a nutshell, what we show in the model is the conditions for the issuer of each currency to gain a higher market share and benefit from it. We make a distinction between (1) a macroeconomic stable scenario, defined in the paper ‘as one in which the sensitivity of the market share of the currencies to changes in prices in both currencies is not high (as we presume changes in inflation in both currencies will be rather small)’ (see page 25). In this scenario, it is ultimately the supply of each currency what determines their market share (the less inflationary currency will gain more market share over time); and (2) a highly unstable macroeconomic scenario, ‘where agents’ demand of each currency is very sensitive to changes in relative prices in both currencies. In this high price sensitive scenario, an increase in the switching costs to favour the use of one of the currencies (i.e. the government’s preferred currency) would only lead to inflation in that favoured currency and very quickly to its expulsion from the market’ (see page 25). The model can thus be applied to well-established economies, where both the national currency and the common currency circulate in the economy and to highly inflationary economies, where the government favours the use of its currency and uses the currency as a source of revenues (i.e. seigniorage).

This is the abstract of the paper, which you will be able to access in full here:

‘The production of good money seems to be out of reach for most countries. The aim of this paper is to examine how a country can attain monetary stability by granting legal tender to two freely tradable currencies circulating in parallel. Then we examine how such a system of parallel currencies could be used for any Member State of the Eurozone, with both the euro and a national currency accepted as legal tender, which we argue is a desirable monetary arrangement particularly but not only in times of crisis. The necessary condition for this parallel system to function properly is confidence in the good behaviour of the monetary authorities in charge of each currency. A fully floating exchange rate between the two would keep the issuers of the new local currency in check. This bottom-up solution based on currency choice could also be applied
in countries aspiring to enter the Eurozone, instead of the top-down once and for all imposition of the euro as a single currency that has turned out to be very stringent and has shown institutional flaws during the recent Eurozone crisis of 2009 – 2013. Our scheme would have alleviated the plight of Greece and Cyprus. It could also ease the entry of the eight Member States still missing from the Eurozone.’

All comments welcome. We still have to work more on the paper and suggestions for change and further references will be most appreciated.

 

Juan E. Castañeda

PS. A previous study on parallel currencies by P. Schwartz, F. Cabrillo and myself can be found here; where we put it forward as a solution to ease and expedite the adjustments needed to apply to the Greek economy in the midst of the so-called euro crisis.

 

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Two competing, free floating, currencies

My colleague and friend, Prof. Pedro Schwartz (President, Mont Pelerin Society), recently published a letter in the ‘Financial Times’ (‘Three conditions for a two-currency system’ praising the monetary system in Peru. Rather than a purely dollarised economy (either de facto or de iure), Peruvian authorities allow for the circulation of two currencies; the national currency (the ‘Sol’) and the US dollar. As Prof. Schwartz specifies in the letter, the system has been working rather well since its introduction in 1990, provided that three main conditions are met:

– Free movement of capital so Peruvians are free to put their income in either currency and take their money out of the country if they didn’t trust the national authorities.

– Both currencies freely float in the market, so their value clearly reflects the confidence of money holders on the issuer.

– And, in order to avoid the expel of the national currency from the market, the national central bank conducts an independent monetary policy focused on maintaining the purchasing power of the currency; which has resulted in a quite moderate rate of inflation in the last years. Doing so will foster the demand for the national currency on long term basis and thus make it attractive for the public.

Nothing really new so far; this type of two or even more currency systems worked well in the past all across the world: one currency was used for international trade, another for savings and possibly another for small transactions.  The government usually tried to control the parities but the price of the different currencies fluctuated in the market according to their purchasing power.

Those familiar with this blog won’t be surprised when I say that I do find this alternative monetary system a more desirable regime to both introduce more competition in the monetary system and thus discipline money issuers more effectively, as well as provide a convenient institutional tool for Euro zone member states in trouble to timely adjust their local costs and prices without the need to be expelled from the Euro (more details on this question here and here). Of course, this doesn’t mean that a devaluation of the local currency will solve all the problems, if not followed by credible and sound monetary and fiscal policies in the future under the three-condition system set out above.

Juan Castaneda

PS. I am currently working on a research paper with Prof. Schwartz to apply this system to the Euro zone (to be continued … soon).

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A market solution for the Euro crisis

This month the Institute of Economic Affairs (London) has published a new book with a collection of essays of different authors on the crisis of the euro, edited by Philip Booth: “The Euro- the beginning, the middle … and the end?“. In these troubled times, dominated by those who only see more fiscal centralisation as the single way to overcome the euro crisis, this book is a true rarity; as, amongst others, it has several chapters with practical proposals to foster the introduction of more monetary competition to address and finally tackle some of the major problems affecting the European Monetary Union. And yes, I said “practical” proposals because, some of the chapters of the book do contain not only a description of the benefits of having more monetary competition in order to achieve more monetary stability in the medium to the long run, but also the institutional and market arrangements needed to be implemented in the current scenario in Europe.  A novelty indeed! In this regard, the proposal I support in the book (chapter 6), which consist of (1) at least the elimination of the legal tender clause and (2) the competition of the euro with the former national currencies, could be just a starting point in the right direction. Even more, we (profs. Schwartz, Cabrillo and myself) have calculated the costs of this alternative (more open) monetary regime and they are by far less than the costs we are all still paying just to maintain the current (flawed) system.

The publication of the book (12th April) was accompanied by the following (joint) statement of the contributing authors (see their names and  affiliations here):

“The euro zone as we know it must end or be radically reformed. Current mechanisms being used to manage the euro crisis are inadequate at every level. And as Cyprus shows us, the euro-zone crisis is far from over.

In new research from the Institute of Economic Affairs, The Euro: The Beginning, the Middle … and the End?, leading economists in this field, analyse the problems with the current approach being taken to resolve the euro zone crisis and argue:

• Product and labour markets in euro-zone member states are far too rigid to respond adequately to economic shocks. The result has been high unemployment and prolonged recession in a number of euro-zone countries.

• The EU must therefore face up to the inadequacies of its policies both in terms of the long-term structural errors in policy and of the short-term management of the euro-zone crisis.

• There should not be a debt union of any form. Governments must be responsible for servicing their debts without bailouts.

• Euro-zone countries must deregulate their labour markets and reduce government spending. Decentralisation and the promotion of a market economy must be at the heart of EU policy.

The report outlines several options for radical reform of monetary arrangements within the euro zone, including:

• A complete and orderly break-up of the euro and a return to national currencies combined with the vigorous pursuit of free trade policies.

• The suspension of Greece, and possibly other failing euro members, from all the decision-making mechanisms of the euro. These countries could then re-establish their own national currency to run in parallel with the euro. Both would be legal tender currencies with free exchange rates. Such an approach should be part of a more general agenda for decentralisation in the EU. This proposal mirrors the “hard ecu” proposal of the UK government before the euro was adopted as a single currency.

• The enforcement of strict rules relating to government borrowing and debt that all member countries would have to meet. Member countries who did not obey the rules would not be able to take part in the decision-making mechanisms of the ECB. Furthermore, the ECB should play no part in underpinning the government debt of member countries.

• A system of liberalised free-banking within which businesses and individuals choose the currency they wish to use.”

You can find more details on the book (and the full book free online) here, at the IEA website. The book will be presented at the IEA on the 9th of May (18:30); see more details here if you wish to attend.

I hope you find it interesting to promote the discussion on these important issues. All comments on our proposal on parallel currencies for the Euro zone will be very welcome.

Juan Castañeda

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“Central banks should do less, not more” (“Los Bancos Centrales deben hacer menos, no más”)

 “Los Bancos Centrales deben hacer menos, no más”

Este es el acertado titular con que el periodista especializado en economía, Diego Sánchez de la Cruz, resume nuestra entrevista, que acaba de publicarse en Libre Mercado (10/3/2013). En un tiempo en que parece que todos piden al banco central que haga más, como si fuera una especie de Deus ex Machina  omnipotente capaz de sacarnos de la crisis y parálisis económica actuales, merece la pena recordar que fue precisamente el activismo y excesivo crecimiento monetario desarrollado en la última expansión económica lo que está en la base de los problemas que aún padecemos. Por eso, una vez solventada la crisis financiera (cuando quiera que ésto sea), convendría reflexionar sobre cuál es la mejor política monetaria para la nueva etapa expansiva que, en mi opinión, pasará por una reforma en profundidad de las reglas monetarias vigentes hasta 2007. Una política monetaria que sea menos activa y se centre en la estabilidad monetaria y no en el manejo de la economía, el control del ciclo (del “output gap”) ni tampoco la estabilización de los precios, menos aún si se hace persiguiendo un crecimiento (aunque sea moderado) de la inflación medida mediante el IPC.

Hablamos también de los recientes rescates bancarios, la política de préstamo (más o menos expreso)  de los bancos centrales a sus Estados, así  como de algunas alternativas al sistema actual de monopolio de emisión de moneda de curso legal controlado en última instancia por el Estado. Como siempre, vuestros comentarios serán muy bienvenidos en el blog.

Texto completo de la entrevista aquí:

http://www.libremercado.com/2013-03-10/juan-castaneda-los-bancos-centrales-deben-hacer-menos-no-mas-1276484372/

Juan Castañeda

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(A summary in English)

“Central banks should do less, not more”

This is the headline of my recent interwiew with the economic journalist, Diego Sánchez de la Cruz, just published in Libre Mercado (10/03/2013). In a time when all and sundry ask the central bank to do more, as if it were an omnipotent “Deus ex Machina”  able to overcome the current economic and financial crisis, it is worth remembering that it was central banks’ monetary activism and excessive money creation during the last economic expansion what ultimately caused a massive distortion in financial markets and led to the current crisis. As recessions and crises have its roots in the previous expansion, we should be discussing now which is the best monetary policy to be adopted in the next expansionary phase of the cycle (see here a summary of the debate in the UK). One less active and more focused on maintaining monetary stability and not the management of the economy, the stabilisation of the cycle (the “output gap”) or price stabilisation, let alone the stabilisation of a positive inflation target as measured by CPI.

We also discussed in the interview other “policies” of the central banks, such as the recent banks’ bailouts and the more or less explicit financial assistance to the(ir) States; finally, we also talk about some alternatives to the current monetary system ultimately controlled by the State. As always, your comments are very welcome.

Full access to the interview here:

http://www.libremercado.com/2013-03-10/juan-castaneda-los-bancos-centrales-deben-hacer-menos-no-mas-1276484372/

Juan Castañeda

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A chat on fractional reserve and monetary competition

This video was originally recorded in Spanish and released on the 15th of March 2012 at Vimeo (Spanish version). Then it was very kindly supported by the GoldMoney Foundation, so we could release an English version of the video on July this year, entitled: “The Spanish economic crisis”. I would like to thank GoldMoney very much for their support.

You can also find below a summary of the content of the video, as quoted from the GoldMoney website (research section).

Enjoy it! Comments very much welcome.

Juan Castañeda

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The Spanish economic crisis: ‘Yo Invito – ¿Dónde está mi dinero?’

What caused the Spanish economic crisis, and how safe is your money in banks? Maria Blanco, economist and member of the Instituto Juan de Mariana; Doctor in Economics Juan Castaneda; Marion Mueller, founder of OroyFinanzas.com; and Expansion.com journalist Miquel Roig discuss this and more over coffee at Madrid’s Café Gijón.

Fractional reserve banking, sound money, and the prospects for monetary reform in Spain and the wider world are the broader topics of conversation. Though the quartet are heartened that more and more people in Spain are taking an interest in economics since the country’s debt problems became apparent, they doubt that the kind of radical monetary reforms they favour would win support among many Spaniards. They are heartened though that elsewhere in the world – notably an increasing number of US states – the sound money cause is gaining support, albeit slowly, among citizens and politicians.

This video was recorded on 10 March 2012 in Madrid.

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Gold standard under a competitive market scenario: a debate

 

Gold standard has been often claimed to be the liberal panacea as regard to monetary regimes. I myself believed it for quite a long time.  However,  the study of monetary history in a broader and longer perspective has made me change my mind on this question. In relation to the gold standard, Milton Friedman (1) made a very interesting critique from a liberal perspective in the paper presented at the Mont Pelerin Society in 1961. His work, “Real Versus Pseudo Gold Standards” is a true challenge for all those who beleive that the classical gold standard was (and still is) a panacea. As Friedman remarked, it is difficult for a pro free-market economy to put the label of “liberal” to a monetary regime in which the State fixed the price of one specific good (in this case, the covertibility rate between the bank notes and the gold held by the central bank). In his view, the belief of the classical gold standard as part of the main liberal body of theories is the result of the traditional involvement of the State in the monetary field; as a result, we cannot even think of a monetary system in which the price of gold were not determined by the State, but by the competitive dynamic of different issuers of bank money and money holders themselves.

And this is the sort of the debate that I introduced in the last meetting of the “ANR DAMIN” Project (coordinated by Prof. Georges Depeyrot, CNRS, Paris), entitled Silver Monetary Depreciation and International Relations, hold in Paris last January. It was an extraordinary  meeting with experts and very good colleagues in the area of contemporary monetary history; and my proposal to talk about a competitive gold standard monetary system was received with some surprise at first. Then, once the question was properly set and introduced, we did develop a very interesting debate on the feasability of a monetary regime not necesarilly monopolised by the State; one in which, different issuers of paper money, backed with gold, were able to compete to provide the best means of payment. Under this system, as Friedman masterly stated, there is no need to claim for a fixed priced for gold, as its price will vary in the market everyday according to its demand and supply(ies).

Let me clarify that, even though under the control of the State, I do take the classical gold standard as a stable monetary system, with a remarkable record of long term price stability and economic growth from 1870 to 1914. And this is much more the case in light of the much more discretionary monetary regimes  that we have experienced since the abandonment of the gold standard in the last century; under purely fiat monetary systems, we have seen during the so-called “Keynesian years” how money supply was taken as another tool in the hands of the policy-makers to finance excessive and recurrent fiscal deficits, with the expected and undesirable results in terms of higher and more volatile inflation, and thus more uncertainty in the markets.

The debate can be found in the following link: http://www.anr-damin.net/spip.php?article31#outil_sommaire_1

(please, go to the last Saturday video, “Final Debate of the Round Table”; the debate on this question is in the middle of the recording)

Juan Castañeda

(1) I am grateful to Prof. Pedro Schwartz for his suggestion to read it several years ago.

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A plea for monetary competition

Article originally published in GoldMoney Research, 9th January 2012.

 

Most students of economics today do not even know that monetary competition was the norm rather than the exception for large periods of human history. Even worse, almost none pay attention to this question at all. Tacit acceptance of legal tender laws and currency monopolies is the norm. This has resulted both in a true intellectual loss for those who are already or want to become economists, and in the absence of a public and academic debate on a true exception and even an anomaly of a market economy. In the following lines, I will try to contribute to this missing debate, even though quite modestly.

Following the definition espoused by the Austrian economist K. Menger, money is not a specific good but a property of the goods. In fact, different goods have been used as money according to their ability to (1) make transactions and (2) to be a proper store of value. For centuries, even millennia, the exercise of commerce served as a practical and unintended test to select the best money. First, it was those essential goods widely used and exchanged in a community – such as cattle, wheat, grains or salt. Then – because of the high transportation and storage costs, low durability and the lack of divisibility – those goods were substituted by precious metals for ordinary transactions, as metals were much easier to transport and store at a very low cost. Both gold and silver coins were efficient means both to settle payments and store wealth. They were goods that, in the words of Hayek, had “currency”, as they were very liquid and readily accepted as money across different communities and cultures.

Governments have regulated the content of gold or silver of the currencies, and they earn profits associated with their right to print (or mint) money (seigniorage). However, this does not mean that the state is the only one able to do it. With the massive use of paper money and the decline of gold coins, the state granted the monopoly of issue to a single (commercial) bank in exchange for easy and privileged credit; and it also established the legal tender clause of the paper notes issued by that bank. Thus arise central banks. Legal tender clauses mean the end of a free market in money. Within this framework, the state could easily increase its profit by expanding the notes in circulation with no difficulty at all.

There were many successful episodes of monetary competition during the 19th century (in Scotland, Sweden and Australia, among other countries). In this competitive market, banks accepted the notes of the competence, which were regularly taken to the issuer bank in exchange for reserve money (in most cases, gold). Thus, the banking practise in such a scenario created a sort of club of commercial banks which preserved the purchasing power of the money and public confidence in the payment system. Confidence in so-called “clearing houses” was essential. If a bank over-issued paper notes, the rest of the banks could redeem those notes quickly through a clearing house. Thus, the over-extended bank soon suffered the consequences in terms of a fall in its gold and silver reserves, which acted as a corrective to that bank’s unsound policy. However, the effectiveness of the money market adjustments just described relied on the timely running of those clearing houses, so that the imprudent bank could see the consequences of its policy.

In this hypothetical more open money market, competence will restrict the supply of money in the economy, as people will gravitate towards the currency that maintains its purchasing power on a long-term basis. As far as sustainable economic growth is concerned, this would be a blessing.

Juan Castañeda

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