Monetarist Economics

Here is a clear and thoughtful introduction to the current literature of monetary economics and macroeconomics. The book's central theme is a view of the macroeconomy in which recession and inflation are to be interpreted as the result of the economy adjusting to a discrepancy between the quantity of money supplied and the quantity of money demanded, with the latter quantity being determined by a stable aggregate demand function. The author discusses in turn the place of monetarism in macroeconomics, its implications for the interpretation of the short-run demand for money function, its relationship to equilibrium business cycle theory, the disequilibrium transmission mechanism that underlies the monetarist viewpoint, and finally its implications for the policy of âeoegradualism.âe He synthesizes a large body of theoretical and empirical literature, and his empirical observations are broadly based on the experiences of England and Australia as well as Canada and the United States. Each chapter can be read apart from the others, and Laidler has taken particular care to keep the technical level of exposition low without sacrificing much in the way of theoretical sophistication.

Money, Banking, and the Economy: A Monetarist View presents a systematic "monetarist" approach to money, banking, and the economy. The monetarist approach is a blend of the pre-Keynesian quantity theory, the tradition represented by D. H. Robertson, and the modern monetarist school, represented by Milton Friedman and his followers. A systematic development of a model of nominal income, based upon the Cambridge equation and the loanable funds theory of interest, is presented. This model is applied to the business cycle; inflation and stagflation; balance of payments and foreign exchange rates; and monetary and fiscal policy theories. Comprised of 20 chapters, this book begins with an introduction to the concept of money and its functions and how it contributes to economic instability. The discussion then turns to the new and old definitions of the things that serve as money, the structure and institutions of financial markets and financial instruments; banks, banking markets, and banking regulations; and the money supply process. Subsequent chapters explore the structure and functions of the Federal Reserve System; the problem of implementing monetary policy; the Clower-Leijonhufvud idea of Say's Principle; the quantity theory of money as described by the equation of exchange or the Cambridge equation; and the connection between money and business cycles. The book concludes by describing a monetarist-public choice perspective on the efficacy of monetary and fiscal policies. This monograph will be of value to undergraduate students and economists.

An examination of the role of money in a dynamic economy within the context of theoretical developments both within and in opposition to, the Quantity Theory tradition. Emphasis is on the dangers of basing economic policy on macroeconomic analysis.

Testing Monetarism pursues the complex question of the nature of the controversy surrounding monetarist theory and evidence, and the reasons for the persistence of this controversy. The theory of monetarism is examined in its old guise as the Quantity Theory of Money, and subsequent chapters look at the evolution of the theory to its present form in the period since the 1950's, and Desai weaves together issues of theory with those of econometric evidence. He looks in turn at major predictions of monetarism, critically examining the claims made in the literature in the light of his discussion of the methodology of testing theories and highlights flaws in the empirical data surrounding monetarism.

This volume offers a unique perspective on a key issue of monetary economics: the effect of money on output. Karl Brunner and Allan Meltzer address the theoretical aspects of this issue with the purpose of understanding their policy implications. They offer an historical and at times provocative overview on the relationship between money and output, and go on to present their well-known model of a monetary economy, before examining the real sector. Throughout the volume, their views are confronted with competing explanations in order to highlight differences. The monetarist flavour of the volume emerges most clearly in frequent arguments pointing to the relative stability of the private sector.

Economists consider the legacy of Karl Brunner’s monetarism and its influence on current debates over monetary policy. Monetarism emerged in the 1950s and 1960s as a school of economic thought that questioned certain tenets of Keynesianism. Emphasizing the monetary nature of inflation and the responsibility of central banks for price stability, monetarism held sway in the inflation-plagued 1970s, but saw its influence begin to decline in the 1980s. Although Milton Friedman is the economist most closely associated with the development of monetarism, it was Karl Brunner (1916–1989) who introduced the term into the current vocabulary of economics and shaped its meaning. In this volume, leading economists—many of them Brunner’s friends and former colleagues—consider the influence of Brunner’s monetarism on current debates over monetary policy. Some contributors were participants in debates between Keynesians and monetarists; others analyze specific aspects of monetarism as theorized by Brunner and his close collaborator Allan Meltzer, or address its influence on US and European monetary policy. Others take the opportunity to examine Brunner-Meltzer monetarism through the lens of contemporary macroeconomics and monetary models. The book grows out of a symposium that marked the 100th anniversary of Brunner’s birth. Contributors Ernst Baltensperger, Michael D. Bordo, Pierrick Clerc, Alex Cukierman, Michel De Vroey, James Forder, Benjamin M. Friedman, Kevin D. Hoover, Thomas J. Jordan, David Laidler, Allan H. Meltzer, Thomas Moser, Edward Nelson, Juan Pablo Nicolini, Charles I. Plosser, Kenneth Rogoff, Marcel Savioz, Jürgen von Hagen, Stephen Williamson