IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imk/wpaper/100-2012.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Saving does not finance Investment: Accounting as an indispensableguide to economic theory

Author

Listed:
  • Fabian Lindner

Abstract

The paper analyses the accounting relationships between the financial and the real economy. It will be shown that accounting can clarify the nature of economic phenomena and be an important building block for economic theory. The paper will argue that there is much confusion about key macroeconomic concepts like saving, investment and finance. This confusion is best summarised in the statement "saving finances investment". After clearly defining the accounting relationships between lending, financial saving and physical investment it will be shown that this is a nonsense statement. The theory behind it - the loanable funds theory - will be analysed and critiqued. It will be shown that the loanable funds theory confuses the concepts of income and production, lending and saving, and financial saving and non-financial saving. It will further be shown that this has not only theoretical but also important policy implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabian Lindner, 2012. "Saving does not finance Investment: Accounting as an indispensableguide to economic theory," IMK Working Paper 100-2012, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:imk:wpaper:100-2012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.boeckler.de/pdf/p_imk_wp_100_2012.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bibow, Jorg, 2001. "The Loanable Funds Fallacy: Exercises in the Analysis of Disequilibrium," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(5), pages 591-616, September.
    2. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1996. "The Financial Accelerator and the Flight to Quality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 1-15, February.
    3. Stiglitz, Joseph E & Weiss, Andrew, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 393-410, June.
    4. M. G. Hayes, 2010. "The loanable funds fallacy: saving, finance and equilibrium," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 34(4), pages 807-820.
    5. Hansjorg Klausinger, 1999. "German Anticipations of the Keynesian Revolution?: The Case of Lautenbach, Neisser and Ropke," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(3), pages 378-403.
    6. Hans-Werner Sinn, 2010. "Rescuing Europe," CESifo Forum, Ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 11(SPECIALIS), pages 1-22, August.
    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. Jakab, Zoltan & Kumhof, Michael, 2015. "Banks are not intermediaries of loanable funds – and why this matters," Bank of England working papers 529, Bank of England.
    2. Bofinger, Peter & Maas, Daniel & Ries, Mathias, 2017. "A model of the market for bank credit: The case of Germany," W.E.P. - Würzburg Economic Papers 98, University of Würzburg, Chair for Monetary Policy and International Economics.
    3. Severin Reissl, 2015. "The return of black box economics - a critique of Keen on effective demand and changes in debt," IMK Working Paper 149-2015, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    4. Bofinger, Peter & Ries, Mathias, 2017. "Excess saving and low interest rates: Theory and empirical evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 12111, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Saving; Wealth; Capital; Investment; Production; Financial Markets; Macroeconomics; Money and Credit;

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General

    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:imk:wpaper:100-2012. 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: (Sabine Nemitz). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/imkhbde.html .

    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.