Sectoral Analysis of the Demand for Real Money Balances in Pakistan

The main objective of monetary policy in Pakistan, as in other countries, is to achieve price stability. In order to achieve the objective of stable prices, the State Bank of Pakistan is using M2 definition of money supply as an intermediate target variable to conduct the monetary policy. This choice of target variable is based on the long understanding that only the demand for M2 monetary aggregate is stable in Pakistan. The definition of money aggregates two main sectors of the economy that is business sector and household sector. Theories such as quantity theory, Keynesian and transactions, state that both sectors have diversified behaviour. Money demand behaviour of these sectors largely depends on the different sets of variables. Therefore the aggregation of these sectors is rather poor.