上海交通大学宏微观经济学课件第十讲失业、货币制度、货币增长与通胀-2016.ppt

* Money is a medium of exchange. That just means you use money to buy stuff. Money is a unit of account. The price or monetary value of virtually everything is measured in the same units – dollars (in the U.S., or substitute your country’s currency if you’re located outside the U.S.). Imagine how hard it would be to plan your budget or comparison shop if sellers each used their own system of measuring prices. Money is a store of value. Money holds its value over time, so you don’t have to spend it immediately upon receiving it. * Intrinsic value means the commodity would have value even if it weren’t being used as money. In the film “The Shawshank Redemption,” prisoners use cigarettes as money. Fiat money is worthless – except as money. Yet, people are happy to accept your dollars (or euros or yen or whatever) because they know that they will be able to spend them elsewhere. * The definition of currency in the textbook does not include “(non-bank)”. I added it to avoid confusion later, when students are asked to think about what happens to the money supply when a consumer decides to deposit a $50 bill into his or her checking account. * Source: Federal Reserve, Board of Governors, Statistical Release H.6. The latest H.6 release can be found at: /releases/h6/Current/ * In subsequent chapters (including the chapter immediately following this one), students will learn that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy can have huge effects on many macroeconomic variables, like inflation, interest rates, unemployment, and even stock price indexes and exchange rates. As chair of the FOMC, Ben Bernanke is in the news quite frequently. * Segue from last slide: The Fed controls the money supply and regulates banks. Banks clearly play an important role in the money supply because bank deposits are part of the money supply (recall that M1 includes checking account deposits, and M2 also includes savings account deposits). In the interests of parsim