It was remarked at the outset of this paper that, in the 1920s,there existed a vigorous, diverse, and distinctly American literature dealing with monetary economics and the business cycle.

In the business cycle literature of the inter-war years, the role of the interest rate in coordinating, or failing to co-ordinate, agents' choices about the allocation of resources over time was an important theme, to which Axel Leijonhufvud (1981) gave the name "the Wicksell connection". The...