Alchian on Keynes

The Review of Austrian Economics - This paper examines Armen Alchian’s work on Keynes’s marginal efficiency of capital. Alchian is correct to assert that Keynes’s theory of...     

"洗钱"与"反洗钱"

“洗钱”已经成为当今国际社会不得不面对的一个“公害”。据世界银行的一份统计,我国自改革开放以来,除了经政府合法批准对外投资的款项外,外流资金中有相当部分与“洗钱”有关。但直到目前为止,世界各国对于洗钱的定义还不尽一致,但一般是指将犯罪收益、不法收益通过各种手段隐瞒或掩饰起来,并使之合法化的活动和过程。各国司法界定的洗钱犯罪大致分为以下几类:一是将所有非法途径如贩毒、走私、抢劫、贪污、诈骗、受贿等方式获得的资金收益进行清洗,使之披上合法外衣的活动统称为“洗钱”。美国、法国等实行这一认定。二是将法律明确规定…     

Marx and Menger on value: as many similarities as differences

This paper argues that, as far as theories of value and moneyare concerned, Marx and Menger have more in common than hasbeen traditionally maintained. Each of them had his own abstractconcept of value, distinct from labour or utility and priorto prices. Moreover, both proposed theories of value form andprovided explanations of the origin of money. These conceptsand theories can hardly be found in the works of Smith and Ricardo,nor in those of Jevons and Walras, because they were primarilyconcerned with the determination of exchange ratios. Furthermore,Marx and Menger become more sharply divided owing to their similarities.They shared many questions to which they offered opposite answers.     

Carl Menger and the network theory of money

Carl Menger has occasionally been cited as a forerunner to the network theory of money. This article analyses Carl Menger's monetary theory and evaluates whether he was aware of the network characteristic of money from a retrospective angle. The result is mixed. Menger is one of the first to discuss the marketability and liquidity of an asset, which in German he denotes Absatzfähigkeit. This concept has a strong connection with the network aspect of a commodity. However, he is not distinct enough in his analysis and there is a lack of depth in his understanding.     

动量货币与传统货币指标的理论与经验分析

简单加总的货币指标早已受到理论和实践的挑战,而主流国家的各种改革方案均没有取得成功.其原因是西方学者偏重货币的资产功能,忽视到货币的交易功能,对货币的基本认识存在偏差.宇宙中不存在绝对静止的事物,货币的本性是运动.物理学的动量定理与经济学的交易方程式可以进行类比.笔者尝试建立了动量货币的指标,初步的经验分析结果富有启发意义.货币的重要性依赖于它的数量和速度.西方学者排斥货币的真实速度,宏观经济学的基本结构存在重大缺陷.     

电子货币对货币供应量的冲击及应对策略

当前世界各国的私人部门都在竞相研发电子货币并逐步走向实用化，电子货币的私人发行使它不再仅仅是货币形式的转化，还会对货币供应机制产生重大冲击，其分散发行所催生的竞争性货币供应格局潜存着货币发行量失控的风险；其对传统货币的替代通过扩大商业银行的信用创造功能增加了狭义货币供应量；其不断创新及低套现成本使货币供应统计量失效。因此，借鉴西方发达国家的先进经验并结合我国国情，我国应仅允许银行发行电子货币并以公开市场操作冲销扩张的超额储备，同时尽快实现货币政策中间指标从数量型指标转向价格型指标。     

Money and specialization

Summary.  This paper examines the relationship between specialization and the use of money in two versions of the search-theoretic monetary model. The first version establishes a surprising result that specialization is more likely to occur in a barter economy than in a monetary economy. The result is reversed in the second version where a different specification of preferences is adopted to limit the scope of barter. This contrast between the results provides a concrete illustration of the general argument that money encourages specialization only when it enlarges the extent of the market. Received: January 31, 1995; revised version August 12, 1996     

Money and Information

This paper investigates the role of money in markets in which producers have private information about the quality of the goods they supply. When the fraction of high-quality producers in the economy is given, money promotes the production of high-quality goods, which improves the quality mix and welfare unambiguously. When this fraction is endogenous, however, we find that money can decrease welfare relative to the barter equilibrium. The origin of this inefficiency is that money provides consumption insurance to low-quality producers, which can result in a higher fraction of low-quality producers in the monetary equilibrium. Finally, we find that most often agents acquire more costly information in the monetary equilibrium than in the barter equilibrium. Consequently, money is welfare-enhancing because it promotes useful production and exchange, but not because it saves information costs.     

货币需求弹性决定因素的实证研究

文章从企业和家庭层面的货币需求异质性,对传统货币需求函数进行修正,分析货币需求收入弹性和利率弹性的决定因素。实证结果表明,产业结构和经济开放度不但直接影响货币需求规模,而且通过货币需求弹性间接影响货币需求的变化,产业结构主要对货币需求收入弹性显著影响,而经济开放度对货币需求收入弹性和利率弹性均有显著影响。产业结构升级将弱化对货币需求收入弹性的影响,而加剧对货币需求规模的影响。经济开放度对货币需求的影响将逐渐由正转负,并最终导致货币需求下降。     

Menger’s causal-realist analysis in modern economics

Carl Menger pioneered a unique theoretical research method which served as the foundation of the early Austrian school of economics. Menger’s causal-realist analysis was revived and formalized just before and after World War 2 by Ludwig von Mises as the “praxeological method.” Murray Rothbard, a student of von Mises’, utilized the method in formulating a comprehensive system of economic theory in his treatise, Man Economy, and State published in the early 1960s. Rothbard’s treatise became the foundational work for the “Austrian revival” in the 1970s. In this paper, we address several issues related to the role of Menger’s method in modern economics. First, ample evidence is adduced that von Mises and Rothbard each expressed a surprising ambivalence with respect to his own work in relation to the early Austrian school. Second, von Mises viewed Rothbard’s treatise as beginning a new epoch in economic theory. Third, contrary to the conventional view, a careful analysis of his treatise shows that Rothbard drew heavily on the contemporary neoclassical literature in developing his theoretical system and that his intent was never to set up a heterodox movement to challenge mainstream economics. Rather, his main aim was to consistently apply the praxeological method to rescue economics from what he considered the alien methodology of positivism, which was imported into economics after World War 2. Lastly, I will tentatively suggest that the term “Austrian economics” as the designation for the intellectual movement that coalesced in the early 1970s may now have outlived its usefulness. This term, which initially served an important strategic purpose in promoting the revival of the broad Mengerian tradition, may have come to obscure the meaning and importance of the praxeological research paradigm that Menger originated.     

论拜金主义

本文从客观上、主观上、国际上分析我国现阶段存在拜金主义的原因,并论述拜金主义的实质是拜倒在货币面前,金钱腐蚀了人们的灵魂.拜金主义在政治上、经济上、社会上、思想上有各种表现形式.拜金主义的危害是:瓦解社会主义的经济基础,腐蚀人们的灵魂,影响社会安定团结.因此,必须预防和抵制拜金主义.     

Money and Price Dispersion

We relax restrictions on the storage technology in a prototypical monetary search model to study price dispersion. In this case, buyers and sellers enter matches with potentially different willingness to trade. Across the distribution of possible bilateral matches, prices generally will differ even though agents have identical preferences and technologies. We provide existence conditions for a particularly simple equilibrium pattern of exchange. We prove that in the limiting case where search frictions are eliminated, equilibrium prices are uniform. We also show that a higher initial money stock can raise the average price level and increase price dispersion.     

Money disillusion and stagflation

In the conventional income-expenditure model with rigid wages, the aggregate supply curve is upward sloping. Increases in demand therefore imply increases in real output and employment. We demonstrate here that this conclusion depends on the form of money illusion implied by the rigid wage assumption. If we assume instead that labor supply is more sensitive to price increases than to wage increases, the aggregate supply curve is negatively sloped, and the conventional policy multipliers are thereby reversed. In the second section, we show that this result also follows if labor supply depends on the expected real wage.     

On Income Velocity of Money,Precautionary Money Demand and Growth

A stochastic growth model with money introduced via a cash-in-advance constraint is used to analyze the behavior of the income velocity of real monetary balances and money demand. Agents can purchase consumption goods only using government issued money. The cash-in-advance constraint may become nonbinding because of the uncertainty about the realization of the state of the economy. We find that the precautionary money demand may introduce significant changes into the volatility of the income velocity if it happens almost always. Its presence can also alter the relationship between the average growth rate of money supply and the average growth rate of the economy.     

美国货币市场基金相关法律问题研究

我国货币市场基金的发展刚刚起步,探讨我国货币市场基金的发展具有重要的意义,通过对美国货币市场基金相关法律问题进行研究,希望对我国货币市场基金的发展产生一定的作用。     

Money illusion and coordination failure

Economists long considered money illusion to be largely irrelevant. Here we show, however, that money illusion has powerful effects on equilibrium selection. If we represent payoffs in nominal terms, choices converge to the Pareto inferior equilibrium; however, if we lift the veil of money by representing payoffs in real terms, the Pareto efficient equilibrium is selected. We also show that strategic uncertainty about the other players' behavior is key for the equilibrium selection effects of money illusion: even though money illusion vanishes over time if subjects are given learning opportunities in the context of an individual optimization problem, powerful and persistent effects of money illusion are found when strategic uncertainty prevails.