Fields Of Contemporary Economics

Money

One of the principal subfields of contemporary economics concerns money, which should not be
surprising since one of the oldest, most widely accepted functions of government is control over this
basic medium of exchange. The dramatic effects of changes in the quantity of money on the level of
prices and the volume of economic activity were recognized and thoroughly analyzed in the 18th
century. In the 19th century a tradition developed known as the “quantity theory of money,” which held
that any change in the supply of money can only be absorbed by variations in the general level of prices
(the purchasing power of money). In consequence, prices will tend to change proportionately with the
quantity of money in circulation. Simply put, the quantity theory of money stated that inflation or
deflation could be controlled by varying the quantity of money in circulation inversely with the level of
prices.

One of the targets of Keynes’s attack on traditional thinking in his General Theory of Employment,
Interest and Money (1935–36) was this quantity theory of money. Keynes asserted that the link
between the money stock and the level of national income was weak and that the effect of the money
supply on prices was virtually nil—at least in economies with heavy unemployment, such as those of the
1930s. He emphasized instead the importance of government budgetary and tax policy and direct
control of investment. As a consequence of Keynes’s theory, economists came to regard monetary
policy as more or less ineffective in controlling the volume of economic activity.

In the 1960s, however, there was a remarkable revival of the older view, at least among a small but
growing school of American monetary economists led by Friedman. They argued that the effects of fiscal
policy are unreliable unless the quantity of money is regulated at the same time. Basing their work on
the old quantity theory of money, they tested the new version on a variety of data for different
countries and time periods. They concluded that the quantity of money does matter. A Monetary
History of the United States, 1867–1960, by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz (1963), which became
the benchmark work of monetarism, criticized Keynesian fiscal measures along with all other attempts
at fine-tuning the economy. With its emphasis on money supply, monetarism enjoyed an enormous
vogue in the 1970s but faded by the 1990s as economists increasingly adopted an approach that
combined the old Keynesian emphasis on fiscal policy with a new understanding of monetary policy.