Kowalczyk, Zygmunt2017-10-142017-10-141974Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny 36, 1974, z. 2, s. 183-1920035-9629http://hdl.handle.net/10593/19602Financial flows play more and more important role as the economic development goes on financial institutions form directions and the volume of financial flows. Financial institutions include: banking system, state budget and non-banking financial intermediaries. During the development of capitalism non-banking intermediary agencies such as insurance companies, pension funds, investment trusts and so on play more and more important role compared to the banking system. There exists a sharp competition between banking and non-banking agencies. There are following tasks of financial institutions: — shifting of financial resources from economic agents that are abundant in towards those that are short of them, — conversion of short and medium term deposits which are relatively overabundant into long term investments which are at present the most necessary for national economies, — increase in liquidity of financial avoirs in order to let economic agents fix their financial resources according to a so called portofolio optimal structure. The portofolio optimal structure is reached when profits gained out of it are the biggest and the risk of loosing the value of capital funds is the least. In general, however, economic agents have no opportunity for accurate forecasting of profits and prices in a long term and in practice it is almost impossible to attain the portofolio optimal structure. Moreover, while making resources in the framework of national economies more liquid, financial institutions can fight an inflation pressure since a so called shortage of liquidity in the economy leads to an inflationary situation because either the quantity of money in circulation or its speed grow up. In sum, however, the role of financial institutions is little explained and first of all, there is no "general theory of financial flows" resembling the monetary theory.polinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessArtykuł