The Evolution of the Sophisticated Quantity Theory: Marshall vs.Wicksell on Transaction Demand

When the money supply increased exogenously, Marshall's vs. Wicksell's versions of short run inflation transmission are shown to be different because of their ideas on money demand. During the approach to monetary equilibrium, the implication was that the demand for transactions cash balances would have to increase in order for inflation to stop. Marshall focused on the real, while Wicksell focused on the nominal, demand for such balances; Marshall assumed velocity of money was constant, while Wicksell assumed it to be pro-cyclic. These assumptions about money demand caused them to make different predictions on how much prices would eventually rise: Marshall described a price-undershoot, while Wicksell described a price-overshoot mechanism.     

Wicksell on the Classical Theories of Money, Credit, Interest and the Price Level:

ABSTRACT Knut Wicksell occupies a significant place in the history of monetary economics as the developer of the "cumulative process" by which deviations between the market and "natural" rates of interest cause the price level to change persistently. A more accurate version of the same argument is a part of classical monetary analysis but there the process originates from a change in base money or central bank credit while Wicksell's version may be initiated by banks capriciously setting their lending rates. Wicksell's version arises from his difficulties in correctly interpreting the classical quantity theory of money and interest rate determination from Hume down to Marshall, but has not been so noted in the literature.     

Knut Wicksell and the Classical Economists on Money, Credit, Interest and Price Level: A Comment on Ahiakpor

ABSTRACT This is an invited response to James C. W. Ahiakpor, "Wicksell on the Classical Theories on Money, Credit, Interest and the Price Level." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 58 (July); 435-457. Wicksell's contribution was to introduce Böhm-Bawerk's theory of capital into a monetary setting.     

Exonerating Wicksell:

James Ahiakpor correctly identifies classical writers as the true originators of the cumulative process analysis usually attributed to Knut Wicksell. Ahiakpor fails, however, to dislodge Wicksell from his place in the pantheon of monetary theorists. Wicksell contributed at least five innovations that advanced the cumulative process model far beyond its classical prototype.     

THE ORANGE BOOK – TURNING RIGHT OR CHANGING GEARS?

The Liberal Democrats becoming kingmakers in 2010 did not depend solely on the numbers adding up on May 5th. Did The Orange Book pull the party to the right, making coalition with the Tories a meeting of minds? Or was it better viewed as an element in an overall strategic shift towards greater professionalism, making a deal with either of the major parties more likely?     

HOW DID PAUL KRUGMAN GET IT SO WRONG?1

This article is a response to Paul Krugman's New York Times Magazine article, ‘How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?’ Krugman's attack on modern economics – and many adhominem attacks on modern economists – display a deep and highly politicised ignorance of what economics and finance is really all about, and a striking emptiness of useful ideas.     

Real Balances, the Price Level and the Unit of Account

A bstract It is argued that Patinkin's introduction in his 1956 book of the stability analysis of the price level resulted in great measure from his reading of Wicksell's 1898 Interest and Prices. Both Patinkin and Wicksell based their treatments of the stability of the price level on what Patinkin used to call the "real balance effect." That effect, however, does not operate under Wicksell's assumption of a competitive "pure credit economy", where all transactions are carried out by bookkeeping transfers, and the unit of account is the same unit in which the accounts of banks are kept. In that case, Patinkin showed in the second (1965) edition of his book that the real balance effect–and, by that, the stability of the price level–would still be a feature of the system if profit maximizer banks held reserves, created by the central bank to settle temporary imbalances at the clearinghouse. According to Wicksell, on the other hand, a pure credit economy should consist of a central bank that attracts and remunerates deposits at the same interest rate charged for its loans, plus profit maximizer financial intermediaries that lend money for risky projects. The basic rate of interest set by the central bank decides, accordingly, the price level in such an economy. Wicksell's and Patinkin's approaches differ from the view put forward in the 1980s by the so-called "new monetary economics" that the key to price level stabilization is the separation of the function of money as the unit of account from its function as the medium of exchange in pure accounting systems of exchange.     

Marshall's Parable of the Meteoric Stones:

A bstract Marshall defended the classical concepts of land, labor and capital, even though many of his neoclassical contemporaries rejected these old distinctions and explained all factor incomes with a unified and general theory In his parable of the meteoric stones. Marshall illustrated the principles that separately determine rent, quasi-rent and interest , but he reconciled the old and the new by making special assumptions, which he did not fully explain His theory of rent requires the supply of land to be perfectly inelastic, and his doctrine of quasi-rent implies that markets are imperfectly competitive     

Briefing Paper: What Economists can learn from Game Theory

Game theory is a branch of mathematics which analyses interdependent decision-making. It attempts to explain how decision-makers might take into account the likely response of others in formulating their own decisions. It has long been applied to microeconomics especially to the theory of the firm under oligopoly where the firm, in devising its pricing and production strategy, will take into account the likely reactions of other firms within the industry. More recently it has been appreciated that many situations in macroeconomics can be analysed in terms of game theory. For example, if one country introduces import controls, how will others react? If one country tries to control inflation by adopting a tough monetary policy, or tries to reflate, what will other countries do? How will exchange rate speculators respond to the government's announcement that it will not intervene in currency markets? Will they believe the government or will they adopt actions which will eventually force the government to intervene? How will markets respond if the government changes its macro-economic strategy? In some cases the “players” are the government and the business community, in other cases one government may be playing against another. In this Briefing Paper we introduce some ideas and results from game theory and show how they can be applied to macroeonomics as well as microeconomics.     

Money, Banking and Dynamics: Two Wicksellian Routes from Mises to Hayek and Schumpeter

This paper examines and compares, in both historical and theoretical perspectives, Hayek's and Schumpeter's accounts of the role played by banks and credit in their respective explanations of business cycles. The first section is focused on the common inheritance of these two authors, which can be traced back to Wicksell, going from Mises whose Theory of Money and Credit provides, as we shall see, a crucial link in this perspective. The following two sections deal with Hayek's and Schumpeter's respective accounts as well as critical reconstruction of this tradition. A close examination of their respective treatments of the banking system and its effects on economic productive structures then allows us to see in a new light the theoretical question of the impact of credit on economic dynamics and its related policy proposals. The last section is dedicated to a comparison between Hayek's and Schumpeter's views of the dynamics of monetary economies and their corresponding policy issues.     

Wicksell's Unaminity Rule

A bstract    This paper identifies the extent to which James Buchanan's interpretation of Knut Wicksell's unanimity rule, as spelled out in the second essay in Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen (1896), has come to dominate the public economics literature despite competing with the interpretation offered by Richard Musgrave. A brief summary of the differing interpretations is offered. Citation analysis is used to examine the frequency with which Wicksell is cited and by whom. The sociology of the economics profession and avenues for the dissemination of ideas are examined to understand the dominance of Buchanan's particular interpretation and application of the unanimity rule.     

The size of the firm in a transitional economy: Downsizing and economies of scale: The case of Russian footwear

Did Russian reforms alter the privileged position enjoyed in Soviet times by large firms? This paper considers the size of firms in one industry (footwear) during the years 1992–2000 and its relation to productivity. Soviet footwear firms were much larger than their foreign counterparts. With the transition to a market-based economy these large firms might lose their advantage relative to smaller firms. This study finds that while firms in each size category in this industry did substantially downsize, this process did not significantly affect relative productivities. It does not appear that larger firms created in Soviet times were relatively disadvantaged.     

Effects of international trade on domestic employment: an application of a global multiregional input–output supermultiplier model (1995–2011)

The effects on domestic employment of international trade and the globalisation of supply chains are as politically controversial as they are empirically inconclusive. To estimate them we extend the global multiregional input–output framework by endogenising demand for both domestic and imported intermediates, private business investment and household non-durable consumption – or equivalently, we generalise the supermultiplier formula. The model accounts, in particular, for the employment consequences of economic integration and those channelled through integration. We estimate these foreign sector effects alongside those of domestic origin using a recursive hierarchical structural decomposition analysis and statistics from the World Input–Output Database and National Accounts that cover years 1995–2011. Focusing on Spain, Italy, France, Germany, the UK, the US, Japan and China we answer the following questions: To what extent did international linkages deriving from international trade affect domestic employment? Did domestic employment benefit from economic integration?     

Adaptive learning and monetary exchange

This paper investigates three classic questions in monetary theory: How can an intrinsically worthless asset, such as fiat money, maintain value as a medium of exchange? What are the short-run and long-run effects of a change in the money supply? What is the social cost of inflation? I answer these questions using a microfounded model of monetary exchange that replaces the rational expectations assumption with an adaptive learning rule. First, I show that monetary exchange is a robust arrangement in the sense that agents are able to learn the stationary monetary equilibrium while the non-monetary equilibrium is unstable under learning. Second, an unanticipated monetary injection has real effects in the short-run because learning the value of money takes time. In the long run, agents successfully learn the value of money, hence money is neutral. Third, under a constant money growth policy, an increase in the growth rate of money increases output in the short-run producing a short-run Phillips curve. A ten percent increase in the money growth rate has a social cost of 0.41 percent of output per year. Alternatively, a ten percent decrease in the money growth rate has a social benefit of 0.37 percent of output per year.     

Thinning and harvesting in stochastic forest models

This paper analyzes a stochastic forest growth model in which the manager is able to first thin the forest to promote better growth before harvesting. Both Wicksell single thinning and harvesting cycle and Faustmann on-going rotation problems are considered. The Wicksell problem is analyzed by first restricting the class of decision times to (thinning, harvesting) pairs that bound the growth away from infinity and imbedding the problem in an infinite-dimensional linear program on a space of triplets of measures. These measures capture the thinning and harvesting decisions along with the behavior of the growth process prior to harvest. An auxiliary linear program then leads to a nonlinear optimization problem for which an optimal value and solution are determined. The values of all the problems are be related through a set of inequalities. The solution of the nonlinear problem determines (random) thinning and harvesting times for the single thinning and harvesting cycle which demonstrate the equality of the values of these various problems. Finally for the Wicksell problem, the unrestricted class of thinning and harvest times is shown to give the same value as the restricted class. The Faustmann on-going thinning and harvesting rotation problem is reduced to a Wicksell problem which then allows for the characterization of the value as the solution to a different nonlinear optimization problem. The effects of the opportunity to thin the forest are illustrated on a mean-reverting stochastic model.     

rio rubbish

Did anything come out of Rio Earth Summit? Robert Whelan, of the Committee on Population and the Economy, claims that it produced a farrago of nonsense.     

The Economic Sociology of Alfred Marshall:An Overview

A bstract The aim of the paper is to present the economic sociology of Alfred Marshall (1842-1924). Three topics are discussed in the paper: Marshall's ideas of how preferences are generated, the theory of action, and finally the introduction of a fourth factor of production, organization. Throughout the paper Marshall's broad perspective is demonstrated. It is argued that Marshall's approach encourages a closer connection between sociologists interested in economic phenomena and economists. This conclusion is strengthened because of the resemblance of Marshall's analysis to those offered by Max Weber and Thorstein Veblen.     

论资产负债项目的性质与暂时性差异的形成

资产负债项目的性质对其暂时性差异的形成有着直接的影响。一般而言,货币性资产、负债项目不形成暂时性差异,而非货币性项目则有可能形成暂时性差异。在有些情况下,这一结论似乎并不成立,如应收账款等项目有时也会产生暂时性差异,事实上,该资产项目此时已不再是严格意义上的货币性项目。弄清这一规律,不论在理论上还是在实践中均有重要意义。     

中外货币政策传导机制理论比较研究

本文通过对西方货币政策传导机制理论研究进行回顾与评价，归纳出其共性和适应我国国情的部分，然后比较分析了我国与西方国家在货币政策传导机制方面存在的差异性，并提出了借鉴西方理论完善我国货币政策传导机制的建议。     

What satisfies younger versus older employees,and why? An aging perspective on equity theory to explain interactive effects of employee age,monetary rewards,and task contributions on job satisfaction

In light of increasingly age-diverse workforces, organizations face the challenge of fostering job satisfaction among both younger and older employees. Combining equity theory with an aging perspective, we propose that due to age-related shifts in motives and goals, younger versus older employees’ job satisfaction will depend differently on monetary rewards (outcome side of equity theory), task contributions (input side of equity theory), as well as on imbalances (inequity) in the relationship between monetary rewards and task contributions. In a multisource study with 166 managers, we found that while younger employees were satisfied primarily by monetary rewards, older employees were satisfied primarily by their task contributions. Most importantly, a three-way interaction indicated that younger versus older employees react differently to two types of inequity: Being proportionally over-rewarded (i.e., receiving high monetary rewards for low task contributions) reduced older (but not of younger) employees’ job satisfaction. By contrast, under-reward inequity (i.e., receiving low monetary rewards for high task contributions) decreased younger (but not of older) employees’ job satisfaction. These age-dependent effects of job features on job satisfaction reveal important theoretical as well as practical implications.