In the last twenty years economics has created much of lasting value and real potential: it has been a very fertile period. But economics has also suffered from what I shall term "collective amnesia" covering whole areas of public policy. And on policy and the role of government it has,...

This paper posits an information channel as the explanation for sudden inflations. Consumers saving via nominal government bonds face a choice whether to acquire costly information about future government surpluses. They trade off the cost of acquiring information about the surpluses that back...