KREDIT und KAPITAL - Issue 4/1984


Contents


Articles

Gleske, Leonhard
Erfahrungen mit flexiblen Wechselkursen

Krümmel, Hans-J.
Schutzzweck und Aufsichtseingriffe. Über den Run auf die Bankschalter und seine Verhinderung

Engels, Wolfram
Die Eignung von Maßgütern für den intertemporalen Vermögensvergleich

Buscher, Hubert S.
Zur Stabilität der Geldnachfrage. Eine empirische Betrachtung

Engel, Günther
Verstetigung des Geldmengenwachstums und politische Unabhängigkeit der Zentralbank

Wurzel, Eckhard
Monetäre Alchemie. Ineffektivität der Wirtschaftspolitik bei „rationalen Erwartungen“? – Ein Kommentar


Reports

Streit, Joachim
Die Relevanz monetärer Innovationen in den USA für die Geldpolitik

Von Rosen, Rüdiger
Zuversicht bei der IWF-Währungskonferenz


Book Reviews

Seifert, Ekkehard
Privilegierung und Regulierung im Bankwesen
(Heinrich Degenhart)

Lüftl, Walter und Martin, C. Paul
Die Formeln für den Staatsbankrott. Am Beispiel des finanziellen Endes der Republik Österreich
(Werner Lachmann)

Wegner, Klaus
Im Blickpunkt: Sachverständigenrat und Konjunktur- und Wachstumspolitik in der Bundesregierung seit 1964
(Hartmut Forndran)

Duwendag, Dieter
Staatsverschuldung – Notwendigkeit und Gefahren
(Renate Ohr)


Summaries

Gleske, Leonhard
„Experience with Flexible Exchange Rates“

The collapse of the monetary system created in Bretton Woods and the transition to floating a good decade ago made all important currencies subject to the rules governing flexible exchange rates. In view of the marked short-term fluctuations of exchange rates and their use to justify demands for a new Bretton Woods, there are grounds for comparing experience with fixed and flexible exchange rates. In a world increasingly dominated by uncontrolled inflation, the unpegging of the DM exchange rate in 1973 created an essential condition precedent that enabled the Bundesbank to gain acceptance of a stability-oriented monetary policy with prospects of success. A high degree of monetary autonomy was achieved. The experience gained in the European monetary system cannot be adduced as evidence of the functional efficiency of a fixed exchange rate system on a world scale. In the EMS, capital outflows quickly compel the affected countries to take action, in contrast to the USA, who remain unaffected on the whole by such outflows, whether under fixed or flexible exchange rates. With respect to current account adjustments, in the early years of floating the respective reactions failed to come up to expectations. For the first decade of floating as a whole, however, it can be said that in the large, but not in the small industrial countries current-account equilibria were less marked and less enduring than in the ten years prior to transition to flexible exchange rates. At most, interventions by the central banks on the foreign exchange markets influence a currency’s exchange rate only briefly. It is apparent from the intervention policy of the Bundesbank that it is prepared to intervene in the market whenever it appears advisable. It does not expect to exert any decisive influence on exchange rates, but proceeds from the assumption that its preparedness to intervene at any time will tend to have a calming effect on market activities. All in all, it would seem that the preconditions for fixed exchange rates by no means prevail on a worldwide basis. Stable exchange rates presuppose a stability-oriented economic policy to which the members of IMF committed themselves in the revised IMF agreement of 1978. Stricter supervision of economic policy by IMF is intended to achieve closer adherence to that commitment.

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Krümmel, Hans-J.
„Protective Purpose and Intervention by Supervisory Agencies - on the Run on Bank Counters and its Prevention“

The author takes the twentieth anniversary of the appearance of Wolfgang Stützel's publication on banking policy, "Bankpolitik - heute und morgen" [Bank Policy Today and Tomorrow] as an occasion to reappraise basic questions of police intervention in banking, divorced from the objectives and means of currently valid banking law in Germany. He isolates a protective purpose in conformity with the market economy system, namely "safeguarding the functioning of the banking system by preventing a run on the counters of all banks" and from this deduces what type of intervention would seem to be necessary and adequate to achieve that protective purpose. He discusses bank publicity, risk policy intervention and direct deposit safeguarding systems. It transpires that Stützel's "Bankpolitik" remains today and tomorrow a key text of bank policy regulation theory. This applies in particular to his central thesis that control of conduct in banking by police regulations must start with the prime risks (largescale credits, risks of exchange [interest] rate changes).

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Engels, Wolfram
„The Suitability of Yardstick Goods for Intertemporal Wealth Comparison“

Profits, yields and interest rates do not exist. They are merely products of certain representation techniques in our world. With regard to the magnitude of the index numbers for capital incomes and their sequence, the choice of the yardstick good is decisive. The choice of the yardstick good is purely a matter of expediency. It is argued that the most expedient measure is a unit in which the price of the market portfolio appears to be constant. Measured in terms of this unit, there are no explicit interest rates, while the average of the yields and the sum of the capital incomes are zero.

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Buscher, Hubert S.
„To the Stability of the Demand for Money - An Empirical Consideration“

In this paper eleven alternative specifications of a demand for money function have been investigated for the period 1965.I to 1982.IV. The main purpose of the paper was testing of stability under the assumption of constant parameters over time, applying Cusums and Cusums squared test procedures. Additionally to these tests a standard Chow-test for structural break in 1973 and a test of homoscedasticity, based on moving regression, have been applied. The results of these tests do not allow clear-cut conclusions about the stability of the West German demand for money. This may partly be due to the violation statistical assumptions underlying these test procedures, so that it is difficult to decide which of the results are the least unreliable ones. Therefore, all conclusions drawn in the paper should be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, it seems possible to single out the following result: In the beginning of the seventies there occurred a structural break in the relationship of the demand for money. Estimating over the whole sample period, therefore, may lead to wrong parameter estimates. This is important for policy purposes, so that estimation of the demand for money should start after 1975. But then there is an additional problem: one has to find a specification of the demand for money in terms of M3.

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Engel, Günther
„Steady Monetary Growth and Political Independence of the Central Bank“

It is suitable and consistent with a democratic society that the central bank be politically independent while maintaining price level stability since this an advantageous framework for all participants in the struggle between economic interest groups. However, anticyclical monetary policy measures directed to influence production and employment, are related with selective impact effects -or favor particular interest groups differently. For this reason they are politically controversial and therefore it is questionable in a democratic society if the decision making institution responsible for these measures be independent of g parliament. If there is general agreement that the primary objective policy is the maintenance of price level stability and that under this perspective political independence of the central bank will be suitable, then the central bank should be held exclusively responsible for this objective and should be obligated to secure a steady monetary growth in a way that can be easily controlled by the public.

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Reports

Streit, Joachim
“The Importance of US Monetary Innovations for the Monetary Policy“

Financial innovations, defined as new financial instruments which induce abrupt shifts of portfolio decisions by financial market participants, had a significant impact on U.S. monetary policy during the last years. There are two main reasons for financial innovations. One of them is that they circumvented the then existing regulations of financial markets, especially interest rate ceilings (Regulation Q). Such innovations were attractive for depositors because of the high interest rates they offered. Other monetary innovations are the result of the deregulation of financial markets. They were introduced to shift interest-sensitive funds back into the banking sector. Financial innovations are important for monetary policy because they lead to interest payments on money, induce large and unpredictable shifts between and within monetary aggregates and make it necessary often to re-define monetary aggregates. The interpretation of money multipliers, velocity of money and monetary indicators need continuous re-examination.

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Von Rosen, Rüdiger
„A Mood of Confidence at the IMF Meeting“

At the 1984 annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank the items on the Interim Committee‘s agenda included the world economic situation, the future of the policy of enlarged access to Fund‘s resources and the issue of a new allocation of special drawing rights. The Interim Committee, Development Committee and Board of Governors also looked into the question of the international debt problem, and considered the future role of the World Bank in this context. Both these topics are to be discussed, on the basis of discussion papers which have been commissioned, at the forthcoming spring meetings against the background of medium-term adjustment needs and balance of payments prospects.

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