The Money Supply Process in India: Identification, Analysis and Estimation

A new specification is employed to test for the degree of endogeneity of commercial bank credit, and its response to structural variables relevant to the Indian context. Our specification allows us to both identify money supply in a single equation, and disentangle the contribution of the Central and the Commercial Banks to the money supply process. Bank credit reacted more to financial variables and had dissimilar responses to food and manufacturing prices and output. Instead of interest rates, sectoral returns played a major role. Monetary policy broadly succeeded in preventing an explosive growth in money supply and reined in inflationary expectations. But by targeting manufacturing prices it harmed real output. The estimated structure implies that it would be more efficient to target agricultural prices for inflation control. A monetary contraction should be completed earlier than in the past, and should coincide with a rise in food prices. Information available in the systematic structural features can be exploited in designing monetary policy.