The Epistemology of money production

Du 6 mars 2026 au 6 mars 2026

De 12h30 à 13h30, en salle du Conseil (1er étage de la faculté de droit, économie et gestion).
Accessible en distanciel sur l'équipe Teams "Séminaires Granem" (réservé aux membres).

Ce séminaire est organisé par l'axe 3 "Mutations Stratégiques, Risques et Soutenabilité Financière".

• Yorick Gaudefroy de Mombynes, doctorant en Sciences économiques, membre du Granem
  

«The Epistemology of money production»

Résumé :

Most economists state that money is nowadays produced mainly by way of bank credit (we focus here on commercial banks). But what is the epistemological status of this statement? By which method have they reached this knowledge? 

This paper offers some answers by analyzing Richard Werner’s claim in 2014 to be the first to demonstrate empirically that “each individual bank creates credit and money out of nothing, when it extends what is called a ‘bank loan’” (a vision he calls the “credit creation theory of banking”).  

Werner is widely and positively cited in the economic literature but there has been little analysis of his method. He focuses on induction and rejects deduction, especially the hypothetico-deductive method. 

This paper shows that his methodological claims and empirical tests are contradictory, confusing and unconvincing. Ex nihilo money creation by way of commercial bank credit is a contextual phenomenon: supporting this vision does not require any empirical test but a combination of theory and legal and historical observations.