IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/aelcon/v3y2013i3p35n6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Do Banks Do? What Should Banks Do? A Minskian Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Wray L. Randall

    () (University of Missouri at Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, USA)

Abstract

Before we can reform the financial system, we need to understand what banks do; or, better, what banks should do. This article will examine the later work of Hyman Minsky at the Levy Institute, on his project titled “Reconstituting the United States’ Financial Structure.” This led to a number of Levy working papers and also to a draft book manuscript that was left uncompleted at his death in 1996. In this article I focus on Minsky’s papers and manuscripts from 1992 to 1996 and his last major contribution (his Veblen-Commons Award–winning paper). Much of this work was devoted to his thoughts on the role that banks do and should play in the economy. To put it as succinctly as possible, Minsky always insisted that the proper role of the financial system was to promote the “capital development” of the economy. By this he did not simply mean that banks should finance investment in physical capital. Rather, he was concerned with creating a financial structure that would be conducive to economic development to improve living standards, broadly defined. Central to his argument is the understanding of banking that he developed over his career. Just as the financial system changed (and with it, the capitalist economy), Minsky’s views evolved. I will conclude with general recommendations for reform along Minskian lines.

Suggested Citation

  • Wray L. Randall, 2013. "What Do Banks Do? What Should Banks Do? A Minskian Perspective," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 3(3), pages 1-35, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:aelcon:v:3:y:2013:i:3:p:35:n:6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ael.2013.3.issue-3/ael-2013-0033/ael-2013-0033.xml?format=INT
    Download Restriction: Download restriction for institutions: For access to full text, subscription to the journal is required. Individual readers who register with De Gruyter Online get free access.

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin Mayer, 2010. "The Spectre of Banking," Economics One-Pager Archive op_3, Levy Economics Institute.
    2. Hyman P. Minsky & Dimitri B. Papadimitriou & Ronnie J. Phillips & L. Randall Wray, "undated". "Community Development Banking, A Proposal to Establish a Nationwide System of Community Development Banks," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive 3, Levy Economics Institute.
    3. L. Randall Wray, 2008. "Financial Markets Meltdown: What Can We Learn from Minsky," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive ppb_94, Levy Economics Institute.
    4. Hyman P. Minsky, 1992. "The Capitalist Development of the Economy and the Structure of Financial Institutions," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_72, Levy Economics Institute.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Solomon Sorin & Golo Natasa, 2013. "Minsky Financial Instability, Interscale Feedback, Percolation and Marshall–Walras Disequilibrium," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 3(3), pages 167-260, October.
    2. Biondi Yuri, 2016. "Empowering Market-Based Finance: A Note on Bank Bailouts in the Aftermath of the North Atlantic Financial Crisis of 2007," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 79-84, March.
    3. Butzbach Olivier & von Mettenheim Kurt E., 2015. "Alternative Banking and Theory," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 105-171, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:aelcon:v:3:y:2013:i:3:p:35:n:6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Peter Golla). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.