IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imk/wpaper/100-2012.html

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, Cambridge Political Economy Society, 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. 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.
    4. M. G. Hayes, 2010. "The loanable funds fallacy: saving, finance and equilibrium," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 34(4), pages 807-820.
    5. 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.
    6. Börsch-Supan, Axel & Gasche, Martin, 2010. "Zur Sinnhaftigkeit der Riester-Rente," MEA discussion paper series 10197, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
    7. J. M. Keynes, 1997. "The General Theory of Employment," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, vol. 5.
    8. 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.
    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. Zoltan Jakab & Michael Kumhof, 2015. "Banks are not intermediaries of loanable funds – and why this matters," Bank of England working papers 529, Bank of England.
    2. Zoltan Jakab & Michael Kumhof, 2018. "Banks are not intermediaries of loanable funds — facts, theory and evidence," Bank of England working papers 761, Bank of England.
    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, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    5. 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, Department of Economics.

    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. Fabian Lindner, 2015. "Does Saving Increase the Supply of Credit? A Critique of Loanable Funds Theory," World Economic Review, World Economics Association, vol. 2015(4), pages 1-1, February.
    2. Dimelis, Sophia & Giotopoulos, Ioannis & Louri, Helen, 2015. "Can firms grow without credit?: evidence from the Euro Area, 2005-2011: a quantile panel analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 61157, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Duca, John V., 2013. "Did the commercial paper funding facility prevent a Great Depression style money market meltdown?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 747-758.
    4. Garcia, Alexandre Schwinden & Gonzaga, André Lucas Moreira, 2024. "How credit unions affect the profitability of Brazilian commercial banks?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 190-209.
    5. Bustos, Emil, 2023. "The Effect of Financial Constraints on Inventory Holdings," Working Paper Series 1463, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    6. Neyer, Ulrike, 2004. "Asymmetric information in credit markets--implications for the transition in Eastern Germany," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 61-78, March.
    7. Jean-Bernard Chatelain, 2002. "Structural modelling of investment and financial constraints: Where do we stand?," Working Paper Research 28, National Bank of Belgium.
    8. Desogus, Marco & Casu, Elisa, 2020. "A Contribution on Relationship Banking. Economic, Anthropological and Mathematical Reasoning, Empirical Evidence from Italy," MPRA Paper 114365, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Ahmed, Walid M.A. & Sleem, Mohamed A.E., 2025. "On the dynamic interdependence between risk factors and clean energy stock prices," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    10. Jean-Bernard Chatelain, 2003. "Structural modelling of financial constraints on investment: where do we stand?," Chapters, in: Paul Butzen & Catherine Fuss (ed.), Firms’ Investment and Finance Decisions, chapter 2, pages 40-58, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Lim , Jamus Jerome & Minne, Geoffrey, 2014. "Learning from financial crises," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6838, The World Bank.
    12. Hoggarth, Glenn & Reis, Ricardo & Saporta, Victoria, 2002. "Costs of banking system instability: Some empirical evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 825-855, May.
    13. Tomat, Gian Maria, 2008. "Modeling the Effects of Financial Constraints on Firm's Investment," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy, vol. 2, pages 1-26.
    14. Aadland, David, 2005. "Detrending time-aggregated data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 287-293, December.
    15. repec:bla:germec:v:4:y:2003:i::p:365-388 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Saten Kumar, 2016. "Is the US Consumer Credit Asymmetric?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 63(2), pages 194-215, May.
    17. Hernando Vargas H., 1995. "La Relaci�N Entre El Cr�Dito Y La Inflaci�N," Borradores de Economia 3076, Banco de la Republica.
    18. Vasso Ioannidou & Steven Ongena & José-Luis Peydró, 2015. "Monetary Policy, Risk-Taking, and Pricing: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 19(1), pages 95-144.
    19. Caggese, Andrea, 2007. "Financing constraints, irreversibility, and investment dynamics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(7), pages 2102-2130, October.
    20. Bordo, Michael D. & Haubrich, Joseph G., 2010. "Credit crises, money and contractions: An historical view," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 1-18, January.
    21. Gabriel Jiménez & Steven Ongena & José-Luis Peydró & Jesús Saurina, 2017. "“In the Short Run Blasé, In the Long Run Risqué”," Schmalenbach Business Review, Springer;Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft, vol. 18(3), pages 181-226, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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.

    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: Sabine Nemitz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imkhbde.html .

    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.