Banking on Growth Models contends that China's rapid economic rise from the late 1970s to today has been built on and shaped by a highly politicized and inefficient bank-centric financial system. Stephen Bell and Hui Feng argue that if the Chinese growth model drives how key economic sectors interact, no amount of incremental reform can have much impact on the financial system—meaningful reform can stem only from a revised growth model. For a time after the global financial crisis, it appeared that the expansion of a more market-oriented shadow banking system might help sustain China's economic growth. Since around 2015, however, Xi Jinping's regime has reversed this trajectory and placed China's financial system under heavy state control, resulting in slowed economic development and skyrocketing national debt. China's market transition and economic rebalancing are now in doubt, as is the fate of the nation's economy. By pinpointing finance as a vital element of the growth model, Bell and Feng provide a convincing assessment of financial risks and the prospects for economic rebalancing in China. Banking on Growth Models demystifies the world of Chinese banking and finance as it investigates an ever-rising national debt, a declining rate of economic growth, and the possibility of dire and drastic reform by the Asian superpower's government.

In this paper, we propose an evolutionary growth model in which an innovative production sector interacts with a simplified banking sector. We explore the relationships between long-term sources of growth (technological change), and short-term/mid-term factors (such as price dynamics and interest rates). The model suggests new explanations for the endogenous emergence of sharp crises with profound effects in the long run. An interesting aspect of the model is that these crises appear in a strictly private economy, in which everything produced is sold, there are no government distortions, and there are no exogenous shocks. The crises emerge from the interactions between uneven innovation rates and market reactivity. In fact, high reactivity in financial markets can amplify the (initially small) effects of innovative competition, leading to a destabilization of economic growth. Drawing on the model results we suggest some policy implications.

Chapter 1 Money and growth theory -- chapter 2 Money as a store of value -- chapter 3 Money in utility and production functions -- chapter 4 Money-in-advance approaches -- chapter 5 Unemployment and money -- chapter 6 Preference change and habit formation -- chapter 7 Monetary growth with urban structure -- chapter 8 Money in multi-regional and growth economies -- chapter 9 Money, growth, and international trade -- chapter 10 Money and economic complexity.

By analyzing the growth and regulation of shadow banking activities by large banks in Western Europe and the US, this book illuminates how the evolution of finance, driven by structural pressures and financial innovations, is crucially mediated through state-finance interactions on the meaning of rules and the need to comply.