IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pke/wpaper/pkwp1502.html

Keynes, the Pope and the IMF

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Hayes

Abstract

This paper discusses Keynes’s surprisingly positive views on the medieval scholastic teaching on usury and draws upon his work to argue that the traditional view of usury (understood as the charging of rent for the use of money) as anti-social is well-founded. Keynes’s understanding of the nature of probability allows a clear distinction to be made between debt and equity finance which most economists dismiss. Rather than meriting remuneration, the demand for the security provided by money against an uncertain future imposes a social cost in one form or another. This proposition is illustrated with reference to the problems of the modern international financial and monetary system, specifically the role of deposit insurance and the obstacles to a renewed system of managed exchange rates, without which many regions appear doomed to enduring long-term austerity.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Hayes, 2015. "Keynes, the Pope and the IMF," Working Papers PKWP1502, Post Keynesian Economics Society (PKES).
    • Handle: RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp1502
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://postkeynesian.net/media/working-papers/PKWP1502.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2015
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward Kane, 2010. "The Importance of Monitoring and Mitigating the Safety-Net Consequences of Regulation-Induced Innovation," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 68(2), pages 145-161.
    2. John H. Munro, 2011. "Usury, Calvinism, and Credit in Protestant England: from the Sixteenth Century to the Industrial Revolution," Working Papers tecipa-439, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    3. Coopey, Richard & Clarke, Donald, 1995. "3i: Fifty Years Investing in Industry," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198289449.
    4. Kaldor, Nicholas, 1987. "The role of commodity prices in economic recovery," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 551-558, May.
    5. Nicholas Kaldor, 1939. "Speculation and Economic Stability," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 7(1), pages 1-27.
    6. Kenen Peter, 2010. "An SDR Based Reserve System," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 1-14, December.
    7. Douglas Gale & Martin Hellwig, 1985. "Incentive-Compatible Debt Contracts: The One-Period Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(4), pages 647-663.
    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. Innes, Robert, 1987. "Adverse Selection And Tax Externalities In A Model Of Entrepreneurial Investment," Working Papers 225812, University of California, Davis, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    2. Li, Yuanyuan & Wigniolle, Bertrand, 2017. "Endogenous information revelation in a competitive credit market and credit crunch," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 127-141.
    3. Janvier D. Nkurunziza, 2005. "Reputation and Credit without Collateral in Africa`s Formal Banking," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2005-02, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    4. Gunter Franke & Jan Pieter Krahnen, 2007. "Default Risk Sharing between Banks and Markets: The Contribution of Collateralized Debt Obligations," NBER Chapters, in: The Risks of Financial Institutions, pages 603-631, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Franke, Günter & Herrmann, Markus & Weber, Thomas, 2007. "Information asymmetries and securitization design," CoFE Discussion Papers 07/10, University of Konstanz, Center of Finance and Econometrics (CoFE).
    6. Mauro Boianovsky, 2004. "The IS-LM Model and the Liquidity Trap Concept: From Hicks to Krugman," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 36(5), pages 92-126, Supplemen.
    7. Guillermo Llorente & Jiang Wang, 2020. "Trading and information in futures markets," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(8), pages 1231-1263, August.
    8. M. Kabir Hassan, 2002. "The Microfinance Revolution and the Grameen Bank Experience in Bangladesh," Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(3), pages 205-265, August.
    9. Kang, Wenjin & Tang, Ke & Wang, Ningli, 2023. "Financialization of commodity markets ten years later," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 30(C).
    10. Guo, Kevin & Leung, Tim, 2017. "Understanding the non-convergence of agricultural futures via stochastic storage costs and timing options," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 6(C), pages 32-49.
    11. Krainer, Robert E., 2002. "Banking in a theory of the business cycle: a model and critique of the Basle Accord on risk-based capital requirements for banks," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 413-433, May.
    12. Yutaka ARIMOTO & Tetsuji OKAZAKI & Masaki NAKABAYASHI, 2010. "Agrarian Land Tenancy In Prewar Japan: Contract Choice And Implications On Productivity," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 48(3), pages 293-318, September.
    13. Georges Dionne, 1998. "La mesure empirique des problèmes d’information," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 74(4), pages 585-606.
    14. Carolyn Pitchik, 2008. "Self-Promoting Investments," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 164(3), pages 381-406, September.
    15. Michel Guillard, 1992. "Déséquilibres macro-économiques et rationnement du crédit," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 43(6), pages 1071-1105.
    16. Silvério, Renan & Szklo, Alexandre, 2012. "The effect of the financial sector on the evolution of oil prices: Analysis of the contribution of the futures market to the price discovery process in the WTI spot market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1799-1808.
    17. Ansgar Wohlschlegel, 2006. "Bankruptcy law and financial structure: The impact of managerial incentives," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(4), pages 333-345.
    18. Gabriel Madeira, 2014. "Legal enforcement, default and heterogeneity of project-financing contracts," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 569-602, November.
    19. Misund, Bård & Oglend, Atle, 2016. "Supply and demand determinants of natural gas price volatility in the U.K.: A vector autoregression approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 178-189.
    20. Rau-Bredow, Hans, 2022. "Contango and Backwardation in Arbitrage-Free Futures-Markets," EconStor Preprints 249292, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    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:pke:wpaper:pkwp1502. 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: Jo Michell (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/pksggea.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.