A novel set of long-term data on Swedish commercial banks in 1870–2001 is used to shed new light on some long-standing issues in money and banking. Essays 1 and 2 explore long-term changes in the leverage and profitability of the Swedish banking system, and inquire into the causes of their change. In particular, it is investigated whether inflation and high corporate taxes were the causes behind the increasing leverage of Swedish banks in the 20th century. Essays 3 to 5 describe the workings of the Swedish note-banking system in the late 19th century and compare its performance with the central-banking regime after 1904, when the Bank of Sweden gained a note monopoly. How does note monopolisation affect the elasticity of the currency, and how does it affect the size of money and credit cycles? These classical questions are tested empirically for the first time. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2005 S. 3-11: sammanfattning, s. 15-186: 5 uppsatser

In questa tesi si sostiene che il meccanismo di trasmissione della politica monetaria nasconde un canale di trasmissione del rischio, e che una politica monetaria espansiva non solo aumenta l’offerta di credito ma anche la propensione delle banche a prendere rischio. I modelli macroeconomici esistenti non sono adatti ad identificare questo meccahismo, visto che o non incorporano un settore bancario, oppure si concentrano sull’amplificazione finanziaria dopo una crisi piuttosto che sulla presa del rischio prima delle crisi. La tesi propone un semplice modello in cui il rischio di credito e di insolvenza e’ modellato endogenamente. Il modello mostra l’esistenza di un trade-off tra quantita’ e qualita’ del credito, il che puo’ avere importanti ripercussioni per la gestione della politica monetaria. Successivamente, la tesi sviluppa un paper empirico e di policy che studia la leva finanziaria delle banche. Si sostiene che le misure tradizionali della leva non possono mostrare un importante peggioramento della qualita’ del capitale delle banche prima della crisi del 2007. Si mostra che la qualita’ di tale capitale e’ progressivamente peggiorata prima della crisi, in particolar modo per le banche commerciali. Viene proposta una misura alternativa della leva finanziaria. / This dissertation argues that the transmission mechanism of monetary policy hides a risk taking channel, as loose monetary policy not only increases credit supply but also increases the propensity of banks to take risks. The existing macroeconomic models are ill-designed to identify the forces of this mechanism, as these models either do not have an explicit banking sector, or they focus on ex-post amplification mechanism rather than ex-ante bank risk taking. A simple model is developed, where credit and solvency risk is determined endogenously. The model shows that a trade-off exists between credit quality and credit quantity, and this trade off impacts on the effectiveness of monetary policy. Subsequently, the dissertation develops an empirical, policy paper that investigates banks leverage ratios. It is argued that traditional measures of leverage cannot detect an important decline in bank capital quality before the 2007 crisis. The dissertation shows that capital quality has declined progressively before the 2007 crisis, particularly for commercial banks. A new leverage ratio is proposed.