IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2305.14503.html

On the Instability of Fractional Reserve Banking

Author

Listed:
  • Heon Lee

Abstract

This paper develops a dynamic monetary model to study the (in)stability of the fractional reserve banking system. The model shows that the fractional reserve banking system can endanger stability in that equilibrium is more prone to exhibit endogenous cyclic, chaotic, and stochastic dynamics under lower reserve requirements, although it can increase consumption in the steady-state. Introducing endogenous unsecured credit to the baseline model does not change the main results. The calibrated exercise suggests that this channel could be another source of economic fluctuations. This paper also provides empirical evidence that is consistent with the prediction of the model.

Suggested Citation

  • Heon Lee, 2023. "On the Instability of Fractional Reserve Banking," Papers 2305.14503, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2305.14503
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.14503
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Benhabib, Jess & Farmer, Roger E.A., 1999. "Indeterminacy and sunspots in macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 6, pages 387-448, Elsevier.
    2. Vasco Carvalho & Xavier Gabaix, 2013. "The Great Diversification and Its Undoing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1697-1727, August.
    3. Lotz, Sébastien & Zhang, Cathy, 2016. "Money and credit as means of payment: A new monetarist approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 68-100.
    4. Boldrin, Michele & Woodford, Michael, 1990. "Equilibrium models displaying endogenous fluctuations and chaos : A survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 189-222, March.
    5. Ricardo Lagos & Randall Wright, 2005. "A Unified Framework for Monetary Theory and Policy Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(3), pages 463-484, June.
    6. Baumol, William J & Benhabib, Jess, 1989. "Chaos: Significance, Mechanism, and Economic Applications," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 77-105, Winter.
    7. Nir Jaimovich & Henry E. Siu, 2009. "The Young, the Old, and the Restless: Demographics and Business Cycle Volatility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 804-826, June.
    8. Timothy J. Kehoe & David K. Levine, 1993. "Debt-Constrained Asset Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(4), pages 865-888.
    9. Chao Gu & Cyril Monnet & Ed Nosal & Randall Wright, 2019. "On the Instability of Banking and Financial Intermediation," Working Papers 1901, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.
    10. Brock, W.A., 1988. "Nonlinearity And Complex Dynamics In Economics And Finance," Working papers 360, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    11. Chari, V.V. & Phelan, Christopher, 2014. "On the social usefulness of fractional reserve banking," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 1-13.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Littlejohn, Maximillian, 2025. "The credit card and small business lending channels of monetary policy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    2. Gaetano Antinolfi & Costas Azariadis & James B. Bullard, 2007. "Monetary policy as equilibrium selection," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 89(Jul), pages 331-342.
    3. Bethune, Zachary & Hu, Tai-Wei & Rocheteau, Guillaume, 2018. "Indeterminacy in credit economies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 556-584.
    4. Araujo, Luis & Hu, Tai-Wei, 2018. "Optimal monetary interventions in credit markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 455-487.
    5. Fabienne Schneider & Remo Taudien, 2024. "Credit and Anonymity," Working Papers 24.04, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    6. Gomes, Orlando, 2008. "Too much of a good thing: Endogenous business cycles generated by bounded technological progress," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 933-945, September.
    7. Kazuya Kamiya & So Kubota & Kayuna Nakajima, 2017. "Real Indeterminacy of Stationary Monetary Equilibria in Centralized Economies," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 68(4), pages 497-520, December.
    8. Michele Boldrin, 1988. "Persistent Oscillations and Chaos in Dynamic Economic Models: Notes for a Survey," UCLA Economics Working Papers 458A, UCLA Department of Economics.
    9. Rousakis, Michael, 2012. "Implementation Cycles : Investment-Specific Technological Change and the Length of Patents," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 983, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    10. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Lagos, Ricardo & Wright, Randall, 2016. "Introduction to the symposium issue on money and liquidity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-9.
    11. Gomis-Porqueras Pedro & Sun Ching-Jen, 2020. "Fiat Money as a Public Signal, Medium of Exchange, and Punishment," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 20(2), pages 1-11, June.
    12. Daniel Sanches, 2016. "On the Inherent Instability of Private Money," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 20, pages 198-214, April.
    13. Costas Azariadis & Leo Kaas, 2004. "Endogenous Financial Development and Multiple Growth Regimes," Economic Working Papers at Centro de Estudios Andaluces E2004/08, Centro de Estudios Andaluces.
    14. Gu, Chao & Monnet, Cyril & Nosal, Ed & Wright, Randall, 2023. "Diamond–Dybvig and beyond: On the instability of banking," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    15. Alessandro Mennuni, 2025. "Money and Credit Coexistence, Excess Capacity, and the Size of Monetary Aggregates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 57(2-3), pages 477-513, March.
    16. Françoise Vasselin, 2018. "The Competition Between Cash and Mobile Payments in Markets with Mobile Partnerships A Monetary Search Model Point of View," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01722404, HAL.
    17. Williamson, Stephen D., 2022. "Central bank digital currency and flight to safety," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    18. Guillaume Rocheteau & Randall Wright & Cathy Zhang, 2018. "Corporate Finance and Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(4-5), pages 1147-1186, April.
    19. Antinolfi, Gaetano & Azariadis, Costas & Bullard, James, 2016. "The Optimal Inflation Target In An Economy With Limited Enforcement," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 582-600, March.
    20. Alexeeva, Tatyana A. & Kuznetsov, Nikolay V. & Mokaev, Timur N., 2021. "Study of irregular dynamics in an economic model: attractor localization and Lyapunov exponents," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E51 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Money Supply; Credit; Money Multipliers
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2305.14503. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.