Money creation and financial instability : an agent-based credit network approach

We pick up the standard textbook approach of money creation and develop a simple agent-based alternative. We show that our model is well suited to explain the endogenous creation of money. Although more general, our model still contains the standard results as a limiting case. We also uncover a potential instability that is hidden in the standard approach but easily recognized within a strict individual-based and stock-flow consistent version. We show in detail how individual interactions build up systemic risk and how banking crises are triggered by the maturity mismatch of different cash-flows and spread by the depreciation of non-performing loans (e.g. interbank- or government debt). -- Financial instability ; endogenous money ; agent-based macroeconomics ; stock-flow consistency ; disequilibrium analysis