From the Money Market to the Market for Money

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the analytical focus was on the role of credit and banks in the economic cycle, in a continuation of the classical tradition. For example, Henry Dunning MacLeod in The Theory and Practice of Banking (1892-93) and Hartley Withers in The Meaning of Money (1909) situated themselves within the Banking School tradition, stressing that money is a debt. However, later and progressively, the vision of the banking system as a liquidity provider regressed in economic analysis. The focus shifted from the money market as a special market for liquidity for banks onto the financial market and the concept of the market for money.