Money and Government The Past and Future of Economics 1st edition by Robert Skidelsky ISBN 030024424X 9780300244243

Part One: History of Economic Thought

1. The Mysteries of Money: A Short History

i. The Classical Dichotomy

ii. The Origins of Money

iii. The Value of Money

iv. Creditors and Debtors

v. The Origins of the Quantity Theory of Money

vi. The Demand for Money

vii. Money, the Great Deceiver

viii. Conclusion

2. The Fight for the Gold Standard

i. Prelude to the Gold Standard: the British Recoinage Debate of the 1690s

ii. Nineteenth-century Monetary Debates: An Overview

iii. Bullionists versus the ‘Real Bills’ Doctrine

iv. Currency School versus Banking School

v. Bimetallism

vi. How Did the Gold Standard Actually Work?

3. The Quantity Theory of Money: From History to Science

i. The Quantity Theory of Money: The Two Branches

ii. Fisher’s Santa Claus

iii. Knut Wicksell’s Credit Money version of the QTM

iv. Was Wicksell a Quantity Theorist?

v. Conclusion

Appendix 3.1: Fisher’s Equation

4. Theories of the Fertile and Barren State

i. Introduction

ii. The Fertile State of the Mercantilists

iii. The Wasteful State of the Political Economists

iv. The Victorian Fiscal Constitution

v. The Persistence of Mercantilism

vi. Conclusion

Part Two: The Rise, Triumph and Fall of Keynes

5. Keynes’s Intervention

i. The Trouble with Money

ii. The Problem with Fiscal Policy

iii. The Macmillan Committee

iv. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

v. Policy Implications

vi. Conclusion

Appendix 5.1: Contrast Between the Classical and Keynesian Models

Appendix 5.2: The Fiscal Multiplier

6. The Keynesian Ascendancy

i. Keynesianism Ascendant

ii. Full Employment Keynesianism: 1945–60

iii. Growth Keynesianism: 1960–70

iv. Reasons for the Strength of the Boom

v. Stagflation Keynesianism: 1970–76

vi. Great Britain: the End of the Keynesian Road

7. The Theory and Practice of Monetarism

i. Keynes and the Classics

ii. The Neo-classical Synthesis

iii. The Emergence of the Counter-orthodoxy

iv. Monetarism

v. The Monetarist Experiment: 1976–85

vi. Monetarism’s Fiscal Legacy

vii. From Friedman to the New Consensus: 1985–2008

viii. Conclusion

Appendix 7.1: IS/LM, the Keynesian Teaching Tool

Appendix 7.2: The Modelling of Expectations

Appendix 7.3: The Central Bank Reaction Function

Part Three: Macroeconomics in the Crash and After, 2007–

8. The Disablement of Fiscal Policy

i. The Fiscal Crisis of the State

ii. The British Debate

iii. Austerity: A Comparative Assessment

iv. Conclusion

Appendix 8.1: Monetary Financing of the Deficit

9. The New Monetarism

i. Pre-crash Monetary Orthodoxy

ii. Why Quantitative Easing?

iii. Quantitative Easing Programmes, 2008–16

iv. How was QE Meant to Work?

v. Assessment

vi. Conclusion

Appendix 9.1: A Note on Tim Congdon

10. Distribution as a Macroeconomic Problem

i. The Indifference of Mainstream Theory to Inequality

ii. The Microeconomics of Distribution

iii. Distribution and the Macroeconomy

iv. The Modern Under-consumptionist Story

v. Conclusion

11. What Was Wrong with the Banks?

i. Pre-crash Orthodoxy

ii. Theory

iii. Understanding Banking: Some Essential Terms

iv. Loosening the Regulatory Noose

v. Financial Innovation

vi. Conclusion

Appendix 11.1: Why Didn’t the Credit Ratings Agencies Do Their Job?

12. Global Imbalances

i. Introduction

ii. A Pre-crash Bird’s-eye View

iii. Some Basic Theory

iv. Current Account Imbalances as a Cause of Meltdown?

v. Saving Glut versus Money Glut

vi. Banking Imbalances

vii. Conclusion

Part Four: A New Macroeconomics

13. Reinventing Political Economy

i. Introduction

ii. What Should Governments Do and Why?

iii. A New Macroeconomic Constitution

iv. The Inflation Problem

v. Making Banking Safe

vi. Inequality

vii. Hyper-globalization and its Discontents

viii. Reforming Economics

Notes

Bibliography

Index