All posts tagged Kurt Schuler

Leland Yeager at 90 – happy birthday

Today Leland Yeager is turning 90. Happy birthday!

Leland Yeager is an amazing scholar. My friend Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard put it very well in a comment on Facebook:

“Such a good scholar and a very nice man. Who speaks Danish. And 10-20 other languages.”

Yes, Pete is right – Yeager speaks an incredible number of languages – but I of course mostly appreciates Yeager’s contribution to monetary thinking.

Leland_Yeager

I consider Yeager (with Clark Warburton) to have been one of the founding father of what we could call Disequilibrium Monetarism and I think that Yeager has written the best ever monetarist “textbook”. As I have put it earlier:

One could of course think I would pick something by Friedman and I certainly would recommend reading anything he wrote on monetary matters, but in fact my pick for the best monetarist book would probably be Leland Yeager’s “Fluttering Veil”.

In terms of something that is very readable I would clearly choose Friedman’s “Money Mischief”, but that is of course a collection of articles and not a textbook style book. Come to think of it – we miss a textbook style monetarist book.

I actually think that one of the most important things about a monetarist (text)book should be a description of the monetary transmission mechanism. The description of the transmission mechanism is very good in (Keynes’) Tract, but Yeager is even better on this point.

Friedman on the other hand had a bit of a problem explaining the monetary transmission mechanism. I think his problem was that he tried to explain things basically within a IS/LM style framework and that he was so focused on empirical work. One would have expected him to do that in “Milton Friedman’s Monetary Framework: A Debate with His Critics”, but I think he failed to do that. In fact that book is is probably the worst of all of Friedman’s books. It generally comes across as being rather unconvincing.

Yeager not only provides very good insight into understanding the monetary transmission mechanism, but he also in my view provides a key insight to understanding what happened in 2008. This is from The Fluttering Veil: (David Beckworth has earlier used the same quote)

Say’s law, or a crude version of it, rules out general overproduction: an excess supply of some things in relation to the demand for them necessarily constitutes an excess demand for some other things in relation to their supply…

The catch is this: while an excess supply of some things necessarily mean an excess demand for others, those other things may, unhappily, be money. If so, depression in some industries no longer entails boom in others…

[T]the quantity of money people desire to hold does not always just equal the quantity they possess. Equality of the two is an equilibrium condition, not an identity. Only in… monetary equilibrium are they equal. Only then are the total value of goods and labor supplied and demanded equal, so that a deficient demand for some kinds entails and excess demand for others.

Say’s law overlooks monetary disequilibrium. If people on the whole are trying to add more money to their total cash balances than is being added to the total money stock (or are trying to maintain their cash balances when the money stock is shrinking), they are trying to sell more goods and labor than are being bought. If people on the whole are unwilling to add as much money to their total cash balances as is being added to the total money stock (or are trying to reduce their cash balances when the money stock is not shrinking), they are trying to buy more goods and labor than are being offered.

The most striking characteristic of depression is not overproduction of some things and underproduction of others, but rather, a general “buyers’ market,” in which sellers have special trouble finding people willing to pay more for goods and labor. Even a slight depression shows itself in the price and output statistics of a wide range of consumer-goods and investment-goods industries. Clearly some very general imbalance must exist, involving the one thing–money–traded on all markets. In inflation, an opposite kind of monetary imbalance is even more obvious.

This is exactly what happened in 2008 – dollar demand rose sharply, but the Federal Reserve failed to ensure monetary equilibrium by not sufficiently increasing the supply of base money. That caused the Great Recession.

Finally I would also note that Yeager in his article (with Robert Greenfield)  Money and Credit confused: An Appraisal of Economic Doctrine and Federal Reserve Procedure explained the very crucial difference between money and credit. 

In a great tribute (published yesterday) to Yeager Bill Woolsey – Market Monetarist and student of Yeager – explains:

Yeager was certainly aware that a banking system might respond to depressed economic conditions by reducing the quantity of money rather than holding it steady.    This points to an additional major emphasis of his work–the distinction between money and credit.   For Yeager, money is the medium of exchange.   The quantity is the amount that exists and the demand is the amount that people would like to hold.   Credit, on the other hand, involves borrowing and lending.   Banks can lend money into existence, expanding the quantity of money even if there is no one who wants to hold the additional balances.   And those wishing to hold additional money balances have no directly reason to show up at a bank seeking to borrow.   The interest rate that clears credit markets does not necessarily keep the quantity of money equal to the demand to hold it.    It is the price level for goods and services, along with the prices of resources, including nominal wages, that must adjust to keep the real quantity  of money equal to the demand to hold it.

One could only hope that the central bankers in Frankfurt would study Yeager (and Woolsey!) to understand this crucial difference between money and credit and then we might get monetary easing – to ensure monetary equilibrium rather than the numerous odd credit policies we have seen in recent years. The problem is not a “broken transmission mechanism”, but monetary disequilibrium. No one explains that better than Leland Yeager.

I could – and should – write a lot more on Leland Yeager (for example on his contribution to international trade and international monetary theory), but I will leave it for that for now.

But you shouldn’t stop reading yet. Kurt Schuler over at freebanking.org has collected a number of excellent tributes to Leland Yeager from a number of his friends, colleagues and former students. Here is the impressive list:

Thomas D. Willett
David Tuerck
Roger Koppl
Warren Coats
Kenneth Elzinga
Jim Dorn
Robert Greenfield
Kurt Schuler

8 Comments
by Lars Christensen on October 4, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Bill Woolsey, David Beckworth, Kurt Schuler, Leland Yeager
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Posted by Lars Christensen on October 4, 2014

https://marketmonetarist.com/2014/10/04/leland-yeager-at-90-happy-birthday/

Conference – Free Banking systems: diversity in financial and economic growth

Lund University (in Skåne, Sweden) is less than one hour drive from my home in Copenhagen so I very much hope I will be able to participate in the upcoming conference on  “Free Banking systems: diversity in financial and economic growth” at Lund University School of Economics and Management on September 4 – 5 2014. Furthermore, the conference will hopefully lure monetary scholars to Copenhagen as well. I will certainly see whether we could arrange some informal get-together in Copenhagen in connection with the conference.

The conference looks very promising.

I have stolen this from Kurt Schuler at Freebanking.org:

Call for papers:
Conference: Free Banking systems: diversity in financial and economic growth
Lund University School of Economics and Management, September 4 – 5, 2014

Department of Economic History, Lund University, Sweden
For more info on the venue please see: http://www.ekh.lu.se/en

Travelling: Most conveniently to Copenhagen Airport (Kastrup)
There are frequent trains from Copenhagen Airport (Kastrup) to the city of Lund. Travelling time is approximately 35 minutes and the cost for a single journey is around 12 Euros. For more info on travelling please see: http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s/24936

Paper proposal deadline: April 30, 2014
We invite all scholars interested in participating to submit an abstract of approximately 400 words and a short bio to the main organizer Anders Ögren on e-mail: anders.ogren@ekh.lu.se

Notification of acceptance: May 30, 2014

Paper deadline: August 15, 2014
Note that as this is a pre-conference to the session S10133 at the WEHC in Kyoto August 3 – 7, 2015 papers can be preliminary at this point in time.

Conference rationale

In 1992 Kevin Dowd edited the important book “The Experience of Free Banking” gathering several historical episodes of Free Banking in a “historical laboratory”. This collective volume aimed at evaluating Free Banking as a way of achieving both banking stability as well as monetary stability. It was found that the problems usually attached to Free Banking, such as rapid inflation and banking instability, in fact were not at all the consequence of Free Banking, underlining instead that these results questioned the idea that the Central Bank’s monopoly on currency issuance is a natural monopoly. In a way this book was a continuation of the theoretical development on Free Banking made in influential works such as Smith’s “The Rationale of Central Banking” (1936), Hayek’s “Denationalization of Money” (1978), White’s “Free banking in Britain” (1984) and Selgin’s “The Theory of Free Banking” (1988) (to name a few).

As a result of the recent crisis Free banking as a way of achieving both banking stability as well as monetary stability is back on the agenda for scholarly debates. Again there are those who argue that Free Banking systems are more prone to banking instability and banking failures with less positive impact on growth than banking systems operating under a state sponsored Central Bank. But to the contrary there are those that argue that banking and monetary instability and slumps in growth due to crises are results of the increased importance of central banks.

Supporters and skeptics of Free Banking alike are using historical episodes as laboratories for empirical testing of their ideas. But to what extent are the features of the alleged Free Banking episodes comparable, not only between different historical episodes but also in relation to theory or in relation to Central Bank based banking systems. Historically many varieties of banking exists between what would be the theoretically pure Free banking system and a Central bank based system. All these varieties provides essential information about how a banking system works and why it obtains certain results in terms of banking and monetary stability and in extension in growth. Thus comparing the diversity of the development of Free Banking systems allows us to understand their different impact on economic growth.

Thus the idea with this conference is to continue the work to make historical cross country comparisons on Free Banking episodes and theories – aiming at understanding what features that are required for different stages of free or central banking and to disentangle the impact of these different variables on banking and monetary stability. We welcome scholars working on empirical cases of what is suggested to be Free Banking – whether their results seem to support Free Banking or Central Banking or a hybrid between the two.

This conference is an open pre-conference to the session S10133 at the WEHC in Kyoto August 3 – 7, 2015. Due to time constraints participation in this conference does not necessarily imply participation at this session at the WEHC conference.

Organizers:

Anders Ögren
Lund University
E-mail: anders.ogren@ekh.lu.se

Andres Alvarez
Universidad de los Andes

 

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by Lars Christensen on April 20, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized
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Posted by Lars Christensen on April 20, 2014

https://marketmonetarist.com/2014/04/20/conference-free-banking-systems-diversity-in-financial-and-economic-growth/

George Selgin on Free Banking and NGDP targeting

I should really be sleeping but George Selign just put out a blog post on Free Banking and NGDP Targeting.

This is how George kicks off:

“Kurt’s recent post on NGDP targeting just happens to come right on time to introduce one I’d been contemplating concerning the connection between such targeting and free banking. While many readers may suppose the two things to represent entirely distinct, if not antagonistic, approaches to monetary reform, I have always regarded them as complementary. Yet I also agree with Kurt in regarding NGDP targeting as “a form of central economic planning.”

Am I contradicting myself? Much as I’d like to quote Walt Whitman, I don’t think I am. Instead, I think that it is those who would insist on the incompatibility of free banking and NGDP targeting whose reasoning is faulty. They fall victim, I believe, to a category error, namely, that of conflating banking regimes with base money regimes.”

Read the rest here.

Bedtime for me…

PS please read this as well.

2 Comments
by Lars Christensen on June 20, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Free Banking, George Selgin, Kurt Schuler
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Posted by Lars Christensen on June 20, 2013

https://marketmonetarist.com/2013/06/20/george-selgin-on-free-banking-and-ngdp-targeting/

Kurt Schuler endorses NGDP targeting

Long time free banking advocate Kurt Schuler has a new piece at freebanking.org in which he endorses NGDP targeting.

This is Kurt:

Given that I do not expect to see free banking in the immediate future, I would like to see one, or preferably more, central banks that now target inflation try targeting nominal GDP targeting instead. Targeting nominal GDP has some prospective advantages over inflation targeting. One is that nominal GDP targeting allows what seems to be a more appropriate behavior for prices over the business cycle, allowing “good” (productivity- rather than money supply-driven) deflation during the boom and “good” inflation during the bust.

I agree very much with Kurt on this and it is in fact one of the key reasons why I support NGDP targeting. Central banks should indeed allow ‘good deflation’ as well as ‘good inflation’. Hence, to the extent the present drop in inflation in for example the US reflects a positive supply shock the Federal Reserve should not react to that by easing monetary policy. I have discussed that topic in among others this recent post.

Back to Kurt:

Another is that inflation targeting as it has been both most widely proposed and as it has always been adopted has been a “bygones are bygones” version, with no later compensation for past misses of the target. During the Great Recession, many central banks undershot their targets, even allowing deflation to occur. They never corrected their mistakes. Nominal GDP targeting in the form that Scott Sumner and others have advocated it requires the central bank to undo its past mistakes.

Note here that Kurt comes out in favour of the Market Monetarist explanation of the Great Recession. It was the Federal Reserve and other central  banks’ failure to keep NGDP ‘on track’ – and even their failure to just hit their inflation targets – that caused the crisis.

And I think it is notable that Kurt notes that “(i)f it (the central bank) undershot last year’s target, it has to increase the growth rate of the monetary base, other things being equal, to meet this year’s target, which is last year’s target plus several percentage points.” 

That of course indirectly support for monetary easing to get the NGDP level back on track. I am sure that will enrage some Austrian School readers of freebanking.org in the same way as they recently got very upset by George Selgin apparent defense of quantitative easing in 2008/9. See for example Joe Salerno’s angry response to George Selgin here. See George’s reply to Joe (and Pete Boettke) here.

I am, however, not at all surprised by Kurt’s views on this issues – I knew them already – but I am happy to once again be reminded that Free Banking thinkers like Kurt and George and Market Monetarists think very alike. In fact I personally have a hard time disagreeing with anything Kurt and George has to say about monetary theory. And I would also note that Kurt has been an advocate of the market based approach to monetary policy analysis advocated particularly by Manley Johnson and Bob Keleher in their book “Monetary Policy, A Market Price Approach”. The Johnson-Keleher view of markets and money of course comes very close to being Market Monetarism. For more on this topic see Kurt on Keleher here.

However, I would also use this occasion to stress that Market Monetarists should learn from people like George and Kurt and we should particularly listen to their more cautious approach to central banks as hugely imperfect institutions. This is Kurt:

With nominal GDP targeting it may well also happen that there will be flaws that only become apparent through experience. My reason for thinking that flaws are likely is that, like inflation targeting, nominal GDP targeting is an imposed monetary arrangement. It is not a fully competitive one that that people are at liberty to cease using at will, individually, the way they can cease buying Coca-Coca and start buying Pepsi or apple juice instead. Nominal GDP targeting when carried out by a central bank, which has monopoly powers, is a form of central economic planning subject to the same criticisms that apply to all forms of central planning. In particular, it does not allow for the occurrence of the type of discovery of knowledge that comes from being able to replace one arrangement with another through competition.

I agree with Kurt here. Even if NGDP targeting is preferable to other “targets” central banks are still to a large extent very flared institutions. Therefore, it is in my opinion not enough just to advocate NGDP targeting – or even worse just advocating monetary easing in the present situation – we also need to fundamentally reform of monetary institutions.

Finally, advocating NGDP targeting is not just a plain argument for more monetary easing – not even in the present situation. Hence, it is for example notable that the recent drop in inflation in for example the US to a very large extent seems to have been caused by a positive supply shock. This has caused some to call for the fed to step up monetary easing. However, to the extent that what we are seeing is a positive supply this of course is “good deflation”. So yes, there are numerous reasons to argue for a continued expansion of the US money base, but lower inflation is not necessarily such reason.

7 Comments
by Lars Christensen on June 19, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in "Manley" Johnson, Free Banking, George Selgin, Kurt Schuler, Robert Murphy
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Posted by Lars Christensen on June 19, 2013

https://marketmonetarist.com/2013/06/19/kurt-schuler-endorses-ngdp-targeting/

Friedman, Schuler and Hanke on exchange rates – a minor and friendly disagreement

Before Arthur Laffer got me very upset on Monday I had read an excellent piece by Kurt Schuler on Freebanking.org about Milton Friedman’s position on floating exchange rates versus fixed exchange rates.

Kurt kindly refers to my post on differences between the Swedish and Danish exchange regimes in which I argue that even though Milton Friedman as a general rule prefered floating exchange rates to fixed exchange rates he did not argue that floating exchange rates was always preferable to pegged exchange rates.

Kurt’s comments at length on the same topic and forcefully makes the case that Friedman is not the floating exchange rate proponent that he is sometimes made up to be. Kurt also notes that Steve Hanke a couple of years ago made a similar point. By complete coincidence Steve had actually a couple of days ago sent me his article on the topic (not knowing that I actually had just read it recently and wanted to do a post on it).

Both Kurt and Steve are proponents of currency boards – and I certainly think currency boards under some circumstances have some merit – so it is not surprising they both stress Friedman’s “open-mindeness” on fixed exchange rates. And there is absolutely nothing wrong in arguing that Friedman was pragmatic on the exchange rate issue rather than dogmatic. That said, I think that both Kurt and Steve “overdo” it a bit.

I certainly think that Friedman’s first choice on exchange rate regime was floating exchange rates. In fact I think he even preffered “dirty floats” and “managed floats” to pegged exchange rates. When I recently reread his memories (“Two Lucky People”) I noted how often he writes about how he advised governments and central bank officials around the world to implement a floating exchange rate regime.

In “Two Lucky People” (page 221) Friedman quotes from his book “Money Mischief”:

“…making me far more skeptical that a system of freely floating exchange rates is politically feasible. Central banks will meddle – always, of corse, with the best of intentions. Nevertheless, even dirty floating exchange rates seem to me preferable to pegged rates, though not necessarily to a unified currency”

I think this quote pretty well illustrates Friedman’s general position: Floating exchange rates is the first choice, but under some circumstances pegged exchange rates or currency unions (an “unified currency”) is preferable.

On this issue I find myself closer to Friedman than to Kurt’s and Steve’s view. Kurt and Steve are both long time advocates of currency boards and hence tend to believe that fixed exchange rates regimes are preferable to floating exchange rates. To me this is not a theoretical discussion, but rather an empirical and practical position.

Finally, lately I have lashed out at some US free market oriented economists who I think have been intellectually dishonest for partisan reasons. Kurt and Steve are certainly not examples of this and contrary to many of the “partisan economists” Kurt and Steve have great knowledge of monetary theory and history. In that regard I am happy to recommend to my readers to read Steve’s recent piece on global monetary policy. See here and here. You should not be surprised to find that Steve’s position is that the main problem today is too tight rather than too easy monetary policy – particularly in the euro zone.

PS I should of course note that Kurt is a Free Banking advocate so he ideally prefers Free Banking rather anything else. I have no disagreement with Kurt on this issue.

PPS Phew… it was much nicer to write this post than my recent “anger posts”.

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Related post:
Schuler on money demand – and a bit of Lithuanian memories…

1 Comment
by Lars Christensen on August 8, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Currency board, Exchange rate policy, Exchange rates, Free Banking, Kurt Schuler, Reading recommendations, Steve Hanke
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Posted by Lars Christensen on August 8, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/08/08/friedman-schuler-and-hanke-on-exchange-rates-a-minor-and-friendly-disagreement/

Robert E. Keleher R.I.P.

I was saddened by the news that Robert E. Keleher has pasted away on May 27 at an age of 67. Keleher pioneered what he termed the Market Price Approach to Monetary Policy. I my view Keleher’s work on monetary policy clearly was similar to Market Monetarism.

Here is Kurt Schuler on Freebanking.org:

“Bob’s most significant work was Monetary Policy, a Market Price Approach, a book he wrote with Manuel H. Johnson. Bob developed the ideas that led to it while working as Johnson’s adviser when Johnson was vice governor of the Federal Reserve Board. It was published in 1996, after they had left the Board. It is, to my knowledge, the only book-length treatment of the question, What indicators should a central bank with a floating exchange rate use to conduct a forward-looking monetary policy? This is, obviously, the question facing most major central banks in the world today, and the answer is vital to the well-being of billions of people.

None of the work I have seen on inflation targeting addresses the question in a fully satisfactory way. Using last month’s inflation reading to guide this month’s monetary policy is like driving using the rear-view mirror. Proponents of inflation targeting understand this point, and they advocate an emphasis on expected inflation, but they do not say enough about the particular indicators that an inflation targeting central bank should use. In practice, central banks do look at particular indicators using particular frameworks, but their procedures are tacitly embodied in institutional practice rather than explicitly articulated in the way Bob’s book does.

The market price framework rests on ideas that come from the Swedish economist Knut Wicksell, and it is therefore of interest to any current of thought influenced by Wicksell’s monetary theory—not just inflation targeting, but nominal GDP targeting, more discretionary approaches to central banking, and even free banking. Advocates of nominal GDP targeting say, “Target the forecast!” The market price framework can help the private sector make the forecast. If free banking were to take the form envisioned by Friedrich Hayek, with competing floating-rate currencies, the market price framework can help issuers of currency decide how much currency to issue.

The particular forward-looking market price indicators the framework recommends examining are broad indices of commodity prices; foreign exchange rates; and bond yields. No mechanical rule suffices for judging whether the central bank is supplying an equilibrium amount of the monetary base, so the book explains how to examine indicators jointly and extract signals from them.”

I believe that Keleher’s work on monetary policy is highly relevant to today’s crisis and his work deserves a lot more attention than it has gotten. I have previously written on Keleher’s work. See here and here.

Robert. E. Keleher, R.I.P.

1 Comment
by Lars Christensen on June 6, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in "Manley" Johnson, Robert Keleher
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Posted by Lars Christensen on June 6, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/06/06/robert-e-keleher-r-i-p/

Schuler on money demand – and a bit of Lithuanian memories…

Here is Kurt Schuler over at freebanking.org:

“During the financial crisis of 2008-09, many central banks expanded the monetary base. In some countries, the base remains high; in the United States, for instance it is roughly triple its pre-crisis level. Such an expansion, unprecedented in peacetime, has convinced many observers that a bout of high inflation will occur in the near future. That leads us to the lesson of the day:

To talk intelligently about the money supply, you must also consider the demand for money. Starting from a situation where supply and demand are in balance, the supply can triple, but if demand quadruples, money is tight. Similarly, the supply can fall in half, but if demand is only one-quarter its previous level, money is loose.

In normal times, it is a fairly safe assumption that demand is roughly constant or changing predictably, but in abnormal times, it is a dangerous assumption. No high inflation occurred in any country that expanded the monetary base rapidly during the financial crisis. Evidently, demand expanded along with supply. In fact, Scott Sumner and other “market monetarists” think supply did not keep up with demand. Similarly, nobody should be perplexed if a case arises where the monetary base is constant or even falling but inflation is rising sharply. Absent a natural disaster or some other nonmonetary event, it is evidence that demand for the monetary base is falling but supply is not keeping pace.”

Kurt is of course very right – the way to see whether monetary policy is tight or loose is to look at the money supply relative to the money demand. Since, we can not observe the difference between the money supply and the money demand directly Market Monetarists recommend to look at asset prices. We know that tight money (stronger money demand growth than the money supply growth) leads to a drop in equity prices, lower bond yields (due to lower inflation expectations), a stronger currency and for large economies like the US or China lower commodity prices.

One thing Kurt did not mention – and I a bit puzzled about that as it is a very important argument for Free Banking – is that in a world with Free Banking the total privatisation of the money supply means that the money supply (ideally?) is perfectly elastic and that any increase in money demand is meet by a equally large increase in the money supply. The same will be the case in a world with central banks targeting the NGDP level. With a perfectly elastic money supply crisis like the Great Depression and the Great Recession is likely to be much more unlikely.

PS I am writing this while I am in Lithuania – a country where Kurt’s (and George Selgin’s) work played a key role nearly 20 years ago in the introduction of the country’s currency board system. See more on this here.

4 Comments
by Lars Christensen on November 24, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Free Banking, Kurt Schuler, MM Research agenda, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting
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Posted by Lars Christensen on November 24, 2011

https://marketmonetarist.com/2011/11/24/schuler-on-money-demand-and-a-bit-of-lithuanian-memories/

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