The money creation process: a theoretical and empirical analysis for the US

The aim of this paper is to assess –on both theoretical and empirical grounds–the two main views regarding the money creation process, namely the endogenous and exogenous money approaches. After analysing the main issues and the related empirical literature, we will apply a VAR and VECM methodology to the United States in the period 1959-2016 to assess the causal relationship between a number of critical variables that are supposed to determine the money supply, i.e., the monetary base, bank deposits and bank loans. The empirical analysis carried out supports several propositions of the endogenous money approach. In particular, it shows that for the United States in the years 1959-2016 (i) bank loans determine bank deposits and (ii) bank deposits in turn determine the monetary base. Our conclusion is that money supply is mainly determined endogenously by the lending activity of commercial banks.