ABSTRACT
The paper assesses whether Special Drawing Rights (SDR), namely international reserve assets and claims on freely useable currencies of its members created and allocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are inflationary. This question has been already raised in the economic literature, but the paper does so by specifically analyzing its most recent and highest allocation in August 2021 on the one hand and its use by member countries to combat the COVID-19 crisis on the other. Moreover, the article revamps the logical-conceptual debate on the essence of money as issued by banks and what the IMF (which is not a bank) is monetarily speaking capable of.
ABSTRACT
There is significant economic literature investigating the hostility to cash or “war on cash” (Beretta 2005, 2007;Deutsche Bundesbank 2017;Jain 2017;Scott 2013;White 2018) by which financial institutions supported by governments discourage individuals from using (publicly issued) physical means of payments and convince them to move to digital (privately issued) ones. © Cato Institute. All rights reserved.