Money and banking sit at the centre of every major economic question of our time, from inflation and financial crises to inequality and the rise of digital currencies, yet most textbooks still teach them through a single framework as if there were only one correct way to understand what money is and how banks work. The Economics of Money and Banking takes a different approach. It introduces students to the major competing theories of money, such as commodity theory, chartalism, credit theory, post-Keynesian endogenous money, and shows how each illuminates different aspects of the modern financial system. It grounds every theoretical idea in real institutions, historical episodes and policy debates, from the 2008 crisis and the eurozone sovereign debt crisis to the 2023 banking turmoil and the 2021–2024 inflation surge. It goes further than any comparable text into territory that matters today but is largely absent from existing textbooks: the distributional consequences of monetary policy and the digital transformation of money through central bank digital currencies, stablecoins and artificial intelligence. Written for undergraduate and graduate students, this book combines accessibility with theoretical rigour, equipping the next generation of economists, bankers and policymakers to think critically about money.
