My Article “Ralph Hawtrey: A Forgotten Pioneer of Macroeconomics” Has Been Published in Economic Affairs

The published version of the article is now available on the Economic Afairs website https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14680270/2024/44/2.

Here’s the abstract:

This article considers the contributions of Ralph Hawtrey to monetary theory and macroeconomics, focusing on his monetary business cycle theory and his monetary explanation of the Great Depression. Unlike Milton Friedman’s US-centred explanation of the Great Depression, Hawtrey’s was focused on the international gold standard that collapsed with the outset of World War I and the attempt to restore it. Hawtrey urged that, after restoration of the gold standard, increased monetary demand for gold be restrained to prevent gold appreciation and deflation. But deliberate French gold accumulation in 1928 and interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve, led to the ruinous deflation foreseen by Hawtrey. The article then critically evaluates recent discussions of Hawtrey’s contributions in books by Hetzel (2023) and Mattei (2022).

An earlier version of the paper is available on SSRN:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4766602

About Me

David Glasner
Washington, DC

I am an economist in the Washington DC area. My research and writing has been mostly on monetary economics and policy and the history of economics. In my book Free Banking and Monetary Reform, I argued for a non-Monetarist non-Keynesian approach to monetary policy, based on a theory of a competitive supply of money. Over the years, I have become increasingly impressed by the similarities between my approach and that of R. G. Hawtrey and hope to bring Hawtrey’s unduly neglected contributions to the attention of a wider audience.

My new book Studies in the History of Monetary Theory: Controversies and Clarifications has been published by Palgrave Macmillan

Follow me on Twitter @david_glasner

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