Money Multiplier Formula - Explained
What is the Money Multiplier Formula?
- Marketing, Advertising, Sales & PR
- Accounting, Taxation, and Reporting
- Professionalism & Career Development
-
Law, Transactions, & Risk Management
Government, Legal System, Administrative Law, & Constitutional Law Legal Disputes - Civil & Criminal Law Agency Law HR, Employment, Labor, & Discrimination Business Entities, Corporate Governance & Ownership Business Transactions, Antitrust, & Securities Law Real Estate, Personal, & Intellectual Property Commercial Law: Contract, Payments, Security Interests, & Bankruptcy Consumer Protection Insurance & Risk Management Immigration Law Environmental Protection Law Inheritance, Estates, and Trusts
- Business Management & Operations
- Economics, Finance, & Analytics
- Courses
What is the Money Multiplier Formula?
In a system with multiple banks, Singleton Bank deposited the initial excess reserve amount that it decided to lend to Hank’s Auto Supply into First National Bank, which is free to loan out $8.1 million. If all banks loan out their excess reserves, the money supply will expand. In a multi-bank system, institutions determine the amount of money that the system can create by using the money multiplier. This tells us by how many times a loan will be “multiplied” as it is spent in the economy and then re-deposited in other banks.
Fortunately, a formula exists for calculating the total of these many rounds of lending in a banking system. The money multiplier formula is:
1 / Reserve Requirement
We then multiply the money multiplier by the change in excess reserves to determine the total amount of M1 money supply created in the banking system. See the Work it Out feature to walk through the multiplier calculation.
The money multiplier will depend on the proportion of reserves that the Federal Reserve Band requires banks to hold. Additionally, a bank can also choose to hold extra reserves. Banks may decide to vary how much they hold in reserves for two reasons: macroeconomic conditions and government rules. When an economy is in recession, banks are likely to hold a higher proportion of reserves because they fear that customers are less likely to repay loans when the economy is slow. The Federal Reserve may also raise or lower the required reserves held by banks as a policy move to affect the quantity of money in an economy.
The process of how banks create money shows how the quantity of money in an economy is closely linked to the quantity of lending or credit in the economy. All the money in the economy, except for the original reserves, is a result of bank loans that institutions repeatedly re-deposit and loan.
Finally, the money multiplier depends on people re-depositing the money that they receive in the banking system. If people instead store their cash in safe-deposit boxes or in shoeboxes hidden in their closets, then banks cannot recirculate the money in the form of loans. Central banks have an incentive to assure that bank deposits are safe because if people worry that they may lose their bank deposits, they may start holding more money in cash, instead of depositing it in banks, and the quantity of loans in an economy will decline. Low-income countries have what economists sometimes refer to as “mattress savings,” or money that people are hiding in their homes because they do not trust banks. When mattress savings in an economy are substantial, banks cannot lend out those funds and the money multiplier cannot operate as effectively. The overall quantity of money and loans in such an economy will decline.
Related Topics
- Legal Tender
- Numismatics
- Gresham's Law
- Barter
- Double Coincidence of Wants
- Parity
- Functions of Money
- Medium of Exchange
- Unit of Account
- Store of Value
- Time Value of Money
- Standard of Deferred Payment
- Liquidity Preference Theory
- National Savings and Investment Identity
- Circular Flow of Money
- Commodity Money
- Gold Exchange Standard
- Bretton Woods System
- Fiat Money
- Money Supply
- M1 and M2 Money Supply
- Monetary Base
- Savings, Demand, and Time Deposits
- Banks
- How Do Banks Create Money?
- Financial Intermediary
- Bank Balance Sheet
- Money Multiplier Formula
- Velocity of Money
- Multiplier Effect
- Quantity Equation of Money
- McCallum Rule
- Neutrality of Money
- Real Bills Theory
- Banking System?
- Central Bank
- Federal Reserve System
- Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)
- Fed Balance Sheet
- Term Auction Facility
- Taylor Rule
- How is the Federal Reserve Bank Organized?
- What is Bank Regulation?
- CAMELS Rating
- FDIC
- CFPB
- Bank Supervision
- Bank Runs
- What is Deposit Insurance?
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
- Lender of Last Resort
- Central Banks Carry Out Monetary Policy
- Open Market Operations
- Bank Reserve
- Discount Rate
- Federal Funds Rate
- Monetary Policy
- Contractionary and Expansionary Monetary Policy
- Loose vs Tight Monetary Policy
- Easy Monetary Policy
- Accommodative Monetary Policy
- Dove & Hawk (Monetary Policy) - Explained
- Tight Monetary Policy - Explained
- Stabilization Policy
- Pushing on a String
- The Effect of Monetary Policy on Interest Rates
- Federal Funds Rate
- Gibson Paradox
- Vasicek Interest Rate Model
- Equation of Exchange (Economics)
- The Effect of Monetary Policy on Aggregate Demand
- Quantitative Easing
- Reserve Currency
- What are Excess Reserves?
- Unpredictable Movements of Velocity
- Central Banks - Unemployment and Inflation
- Inflation Targeting
- Fisher Effect
- Asset Bubbles and Leverage Cycles
- Countercyclical
- Money Capital Market
- Quantity Theory of Money
- Aggregate Expenditure Model
- IS-LM Model
- European Capital Market Institute