Revenue Implications of Money Creation under Leviathan
Abstract
Most governments possess a monopoly franchise in the creation of money. Economists provide an analytical justification for this institutional arrangement either in terms of the use of aggregates for macro-economic stabilization or in terms of the alleged inability of competitive markets to generate tolerably efficient results. Any complete case for the government's monopoly must, however, depend on a comparison of market and political arrangements, a comparison that requires predictions about how governments are likely to behave once a monopoly franchise is assigned. Similarly, such predictions are crucial in evaluating restrictions that might be imposed on the government's exercise of its money creation power-in designing a monetary In the analysis of political arrangements, the revenue implications of the money creation power are probably more significant than considerations of either macro-economic stability or optimality in the money supply. Although those revenue implications are incidental to demonstrating the nature of market failure in arrangements, they are fundamental in understanding how the government might exploit a monopoly in money creation, once granted. Our interest in the revenue effects of money creation stems from a broader study of constitutional restrictions on the revenueraising authority of government (see our book). The power to create money is naturally encompassed in this. Restrictions on the revenue-raising power must embody restrictions on the power to create money; consequently, the fiscal constitution has important implications for the constitution. In this paper, we examine both the revenue implications of money creation, and desirable consitutional restrictions on the money creation power within the context of a specific model of political processes.
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