Over at the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s website they have reproduced a comment from good old Ludwig von Mises on “The Objectives of Currency Devaluation” from Human Action. I love Human Action and there is no doubt Ludwig von Mises was a great economist, but to be frank when it comes to the issue of devaluation he was basically clueless. Sorry guys – his views on this issue are not too impressive.

He mentions five reasons why policy makers might favour “devaluation”:

• To preserve the height of nominal wage rates or even to create the conditions required for their further increase, while real wage rates should rather sink
• To make commodity prices, especially the prices of farm products, rise in terms of domestic money or, at least, to check their further drop
• To favor the debtors at the expense of the creditors
• To encourage exports and to reduce imports
• To attract more foreign tourists and to make it more expensive (in terms of domestic money) for the country’s own citizens to visit foreign countries

It might be that this is what motivates policy makers to devalue the currency, but he forgets the real reason why it might make perfectly good sense to allow the currency to weaken. If monetary policy has caused nominal GDP to collapse as was the case during the Great Depression (or during the the Great Recession!) then a policy of devaluation is of course the policy to pursue. Hence, von Mises totally fails to understand the monetary implications of devaluation.

The core of von Mises’ lack to understand of the monetary impact of devaluation is that he – like Rothbard – has a very hard time differentiating between good and bad deflation. George Selgin has a great discussion of von Mises’ view of deflation in his 1990 paper “Ludwig von Mises and the Case for Gold”. George goes out of the way to explain that von Mises really did understand the difference between good and bad deflation and that given his views he should really have supported a monetary policy regime (rather than the gold standard) that ensures stabilisation of nominal spending (M*V). The paradox is of course that you can interpret von Mises in this way, but why would he then be so outspoken against devaluation? In my view von Mises did not fully appreciate that there is good and bad devaluation – so it is no surprise that his modern day internet supporters (of the populist kind…) is so in love with the gold standard. By the way the kind of arguments von Mises has against devaluation and in favour of the gold standard are very similar to the arguments of the most outspoken proponents of the euro today. Yes, the logic of a common currency and the gold standard is exactly the same.

I never understood people who support free markets could also be in favour of fixing the price of the currency – to me that makes absolutely no sense. Milton Friedman of course reached the same conclusion and more important Friedman realised that if you try to peg your currency at an unsustainable level then policy makers will try to pursue interventionist policies to maintain this peg. Capital restrictions and protectionism are the children of pegged exchange rates. Just ask Douglas Irwin.

Further reading:

My recent post on the monetary effects of devaluation: Exchange rates and monetary policy – it’s not about competitiveness: Some Argentine lessons

My posts on Milton Friedman’s view of exchange rate policy:

Milton Friedman on exchange rate policy #1
Milton Friedman on exchange rate policy #2
Milton Friedman on exchange rate policy #3
Milton Friedman on exchange rate policy #4
Milton Friedman on exchange rate policy #5
Milton Friedman on exchange rate policy #6

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UPDATE: Shawn Ritenour disagrees with me on this issue. Read his comment here. What I regret the most about the comments above is not that I have been a bit too hard on Mises, but rather that my representation of George Selgin’s views on the issue. While I do not think my representation of what George said in his 1999 paper is wrong I do admit that I could have expressed his position more clearly.

By the way I have noticed that when I verbally insult people – living or dead – then it clearly increases the traffic on my blog. So if I wanted to maximize “clicks” I would insult a lot more people. However, I do not like that kind of debate so I promise to try to stay civil and polite – also to people with whom I disagree. Using words like “clueless” in the headline might not live up to that criteria, but I will admit that I have been greatly frustrated by the arguments made by “internet Austrians” recently (And once again I am not talking about what we could call the GMU Austrians…).