Stability of a time-homogeneous system of money and antimoney in an agent-based random economy

Julian Alexander Cornelius Stein and Dieter Braun

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2019, vol. 520, issue C, 232-249

Abstract: Financial crises appear throughout human history. In particular, the financial crisis of 2008 highlighted the role of uncontrolled creation of money through lending as a source of financial instability. The creation of money is also problematic due to the implicit non-local transfers of wealth (Cantillon effect) and a leak of the economic memory of past transactions. Motivated by an analogy to particle physics, time-homogeneity can be imposed on monetary systems to approach and even possibly solve the associated problems. This implies a full reserve banking with a two-currency system which discriminates with an exchange rate between non-bank assets (money) and bank assets (antimoney). The associated liabilities are in the hands of banks and non-banks, respectively. Payments are either made by passing on money or receiving antimoney at respective price levels. Liquidity is provided by the simultaneous transfer of money and antimoney at a negotiated exchange rate between money and antimoney, also termed the liquidity price. In this system, interest rates and credit creation are replaced by a varying price for liquidity. We started to study the economic stability of such a system with an agent-based random economy model, in which households and firms are urged by random boundary conditions to apply stochastic exchanges of goods via a limit order book mechanism, implementing the trading scheme of stock markets. We compared the market simulations under the prevailing monetary system with the money–antimoney system and found that a symmetric price equilibrium was obtained by imposing a limit on the agents’ antimoney holdings. This is the equivalent of controlling lending in a money system. For both money and antimoney, quantity theory is satisfied. Production and credit shocks showed a quantitative and qualitative similar behavior for the different monetary systems, indicating the overall functionality of the proposed money–antimoney system.

Keywords: Monetary theory; Money–antimoney system; Agent-based model; Economic stability; Credit creation; Econophysics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:520:y:2019:i:c:p:232-249

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2019.01.022

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