Irving Fisher's encounter with the Quantity theory of Money began in the 1890s, during the debate about bimetallism, and reached its high point in 1911 with the publication of The Purchasing Power of Money. His most important refinement of the theory, derived from his recognition of bank...

James Ahiakpor's critique of our 2002 work on the relationship between a certain 1932 Harvard Memorandum on anti-depression policies and the 1932 Harris Foundation Manifesto dealing with the same issues misses the significance of these documents, and of the relationships between them, both for...

This paper surveys the literature of the Bullionist controversy which dominated the development of Classical monetary economics between 1797 and the early 1820s. It highlights the contributions of Henry Thornton to the early phase of the debate, particularly his refutation of the Real Bill...

The quantity theory of money was associated with the politics of the right in the '70s and '80s, but a century earlier, particularly in America, it had played an important part in the proposals of the Progressive left. These political associations are examined, and it is argued that a crucial...

The dominance of the IS-LM model in macroeconomics after 1937 led to the neglect and sometimes the outright loss of a number of important issues that had earlier been prominent in the literature. All these losses were related to the fact that economic life takes place over time, from which the...

Recent financial instability has called into question the sufficiency of low inflation as a goal for monetary policy. This paper discusses inter-war literature bearing on this question. It begins with theories of the cycle based on the quantity theory, and their policy prescription of price...

This review argues that Allan Meltzer's account of the Fed. between 1913-1951 complements Friedman and Schwartz's in their Monetary History. Meltzer emphasises policy making within the System, rather than the evolution of the money supply and its effects on the economy. He stresses the...

Henry Thornton and Walter Bagehot were both advocates of discretionary monetary policy, especially as regards the Bank of England's role as a lender of last resort, but they differed on many details of the case. Where Bagehot thought that the Bank's central position in the financial system was...

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