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Reserve requirement

Reserve requirements are central bank regulations that set the minimum amount that a commercial bank must hold in liquid assets. This minimum amount, commonly referred to as the commercial bank's reserve, is generally determined by the central bank on the basis of a specified proportion of deposit liabilities of the bank. This rate is commonly referred to as the cash reserve ratio or shortened as reserve ratio. Though the definitions vary, the commercial bank's reserves normally consist of cash held by the bank and stored physically in the bank vault (vault cash), plus the amount of the bank's balance in that bank's account with the central bank. A bank is at liberty to hold in reserve sums above this minimum requirement, commonly referred to as excess reserves.

In some areas such as the euro area and the UK, tightening of reserve requirements in the home country is found to be associated with higher lending by foreign branches. For this reason, the reserve ratio is sometimes used by a country’s monetary authority as a tool in monetary policy, to influence the country's money supply by limiting or expanding the amount of lending by the banks. Monetary authorities increase the reserve requirement only after careful consideration because an abrupt change may cause liquidity problems for banks with low excess reserves; they generally prefer to use other monetary policy instruments to implement their monetary policy. In many countries (except Brazil, China, India, Russia), reserve requirements are generally not altered frequently in implementing a country's monetary policy because of the short-term disruptive effect on financial markets. In several countries, including the United States, there are today zero reserve requirements.

One of the critical functions of a country's central bank is to maintain public confidence in the banking system, as under a fractional-reserve banking system banks are not expected to hold cash to cover all deposits liabilities in full. One of the mechanisms used by most central banks to further this objective is to set a reserve requirement to ensure that banks have, in normal circumstances, sufficient cash on hand in the event that large deposits are withdrawn, which may precipitate a bank run. The central bank in some jurisdictions, such as the European Union, does not require reserves to be held during the day, while in others, such as the United States, the central bank does not set a reserve requirement at all.

Bank deposits are usually of a relatively short-term duration, and may be “at call”, while loans made by banks tend to be longer-term, resulting in a risk that customers may at any time collectively wish to withdraw cash out of their accounts in excess of the bank reserves. The reserves only provide liquidity to cover withdrawals within the normal pattern. Banks and the central bank expect that in normal circumstances only a proportion of deposits will be withdrawn at the same time, and that the reserves will be sufficient to meet the demand for cash. However, banks may find themselves in a shortfall situation or experience a bank run, when depositors wish to withdraw more funds than the reserves held by the bank. In that event, the bank experiencing the liquidity shortfall may borrow short-term funds in the interbank lending market from banks with a surplus. In exceptional situations, the central bank may provide funds to cover the short-term shortfall as lender of last resort. If the bank's liquidity problem exceeds the central bank's desire to continue as "lender of last resort", as happened during the 2008 financial crisis, the government may try to restore confidence in the banking system, for example, by providing government guarantees.

Many[who?] textbooks describe a system in which reserve requirements can act as a tool of a country’s monetary policy though these bear little resemblance to reality[citation needed] and many central banks impose no such requirements. The commonly assumed[citation needed] requirement is 10% though almost no central bank and no major central bank imposes such a ratio requirement.[citation needed]

With higher reserve requirements, there would be less funds available to banks for lending. Under this view, the money multiplier compounds the effect of bank lending on the money supply. The multiplier effect on the money supply is governed by the following formulas:

where notationally,

This limit on the money supply does not apply in the real world.

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