Monetary And Contractionary Monetary Policy

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Monetary policy is a regulatory policy by which the central bank or monetary authority of a country controls the supply of money, availability of bank credit and cost of money, that is, the rate of Interest.
Monetary policy / monetary management is regarded as an important tool of economic management in India. RBI controls the supply of money and bank credit. The Central bank has the duty to see that legitimate credit requirements are met and at the same credit is not used for unproductive and speculative purposes. RBI rightly calls its credit policy as one of controlled expansion.
Contractionary Monetary Policies and Expansionary Monetary Policies involve changing the amount of the money supply in a country. Expansionary Monetary Policy is simply a policy which expands the supply of money, whereas Contractionary Monetary Policy contracts the supply of a country's currency.
EXPANSIONARY MONETARY POLICY
In the United States, when the Federal Open Market Committee wishes to amplify the money supply, it can do a amalgamation of three things:
1. Purchase securities on the open market, known as Open Market Operations
2. Lower the Federal Discount Rate
3. Lower Reserve Requirements
The interest rate is affected directly by these factors. When the Federal Bank buys securities on the open market, it causes the price of those securities to increase. The Federal Discount Rate is an interest rate, so lowering it is essentially lowering interest rates. If the Federal Bank instead decides to lower reserve requirements, this will cause Banks to have an increase in the amount of money they can invest. This causes the price of investments such as bonds to rise, so interest rates must fall. No matter what tool the Fed uses to expand the money s...

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...lly and fewer domestic goods sold abroad, the balance of trade falls. As well, higher interest rates cause the cost of financing capital projects to be more, so capital investment will be less.
Therefore, Contractionary Monetary Policy:
1. Contractionary monetary policy causes a fall in bond prices and a rise in interest rates.
2. Increased interest rates lead to inferior levels of capital investment.
3. The higher interest rates make domestic bonds more attractive, so the demand for domestic bonds rises and the demand for foreign bonds decreases.
4. The demand for domestic currency increases and the demand for foreign currency decreases, causing a rise in the exchange rate. (The value of the domestic currency is now higher relative to foreign currencies)
5. A higher exchange rate causes exports to decrease, imports to increase and the balance of trade to decrease.

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