Money supply impact on investment and GDP: statistical analysis

Abstract

The question of how the changes in money supply influence investment and GDP have been studied intensively in recent history. However, not all aspects of this impact are sufficiently researched. In particular, the “new normality” (that has evolved recently) limits the use of well-known classical concepts and models in monetary policy, especially for emerging economies to which Ukraine belongs. Thus, the subject of this study was to assess the relationship between monetary aggregates, investment, and GDP by the world economic data analysis using mathematical statistics.

As the information base for the study, the World Bank official statistics were taken (including broad money, gross capital formation, and GDP). More than 71% of all investigated countries showed a significant correlation between M3 and gross investment. The issue of how the strength of this relationship depends on the level of socio-economic development was investigated.   Classification of countries was carried out using the “nearest neighbors” method in a two-dimensional feature space, namely, per capita income and correlation tightness. The analysis showed that 79% of all countries fall into the class with a proven high correlation. Moreover, their level of wealth and development was irrelevant.

A cluster analysis of countries was fulfilled in the chosen feature space using the “mean shift” method. With the help of this method, all countries have been distributed into five clusters with different socio-economic conditions and an accuracy of 91%. Among them, there was a group of countries highly sensitive to change in monetization, up to extremely negative economic impacts.

The study helped to conclude that, regardless of economic development, GDP benefits from an increase in the money supply. Although this factor is considered necessary, it is nevertheless not sufficient for economic growth, especially in the time of the fourth industrial revolution, when the government has to play a more active and complex role in accelerating national technological development.