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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Demonetisation failed to make India a 'less cash' society -Vivek Dehejia and Rupa Subramanya

Demonetisation failed to make India a 'less cash' society -Vivek Dehejia and Rupa Subramanya

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published Published on Jun 18, 2018   modified Modified on Jun 18, 2018
-Livemint.com

The ratio of currency in circulation as share of broad money is back at pre-demonetisation levels, according to Reserve Bank of India data

On 8 November 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the “demonetisation” of high-value currency notes. When it became clear the ex ante goals of reducing corruption and black money were unlikely to succeed, attention shifted to a range of possible ex post facto rationales for the move. Numerous commentators, including the two of us, argued that one such goal would be to push the economy towards greater formalisation, and, relatedly, to push the financial sector towards greater digitisation and a reduced reliance on cash. This broad rationale was then quickly picked up by the Modi government and its supporters.

Now that sufficient time has elapsed, it is possible to bring data to bear on the specific question: Has demonetisation succeeded in making India a “less cash” society? To our regret, as we both had hoped the answer would be in the affirmative, the answer is clearly “no”.

The chart above tells the tale. It plots currency in circulation (CIC) as a share of broad money (M3) —henceforth, CIC/M3—using monthly data from January 2012 to May 2018, the last month for which we have data. All data are sourced from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). We should note that the choice of a different denominator, whether a different metric of broad money or nominal gross domestic product (GDP), does not materially alter the results we present below.

The long left “tail” makes it evident that CIC/M3 had settled into an equilibrium in the range of 0.14—with CIC equal to about 14% of the stock of broad money. The demonetisation shock in November 2016 saw CIC/M3 plunge to as low as about 0.08 within a month, not surprising when fully 86% of the currency stock was invalidated by the stroke of a pen.

The following months saw CIC/M3 starting to rebound, raising the important question: would it settle at a new, permanently lower, equilibrium, or return to where it began before demonetisation? This is not merely an arcane academic question. If the former, it would provide conclusive evidence of long-run behavioural change, with the Indian public, goaded by a temporary currency shortage, nudged into permanently preferring to hold less cash as a share of broad money, even when the cash crunch has disappeared. If the latter, we would be obliged to conclude that the pain of demonetisation did not trigger any long-lasting behavioural change in the preference for currency, thus striking off one possible long-run gain induced by the short-run pain of the cash crunch.

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Livemint.com, 18 June, 2018, https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/PGRi4ySZO2HOWkARKq8GeM/Demonetisation-failed-to-make-India-a-less-cash-society.html


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