Knut Wicksell has always been considered an economist belonging to the "marginalist" school. In particular, his contribution to monetary economics has always been allocated inside the framework of the quantity theory of money. The present work attempts to offer a different way of looking at Wicksell's contribution to monetary theory. This is mainly done by focussing on the different meaning which Wicksell seems to have attributed to the notion of "equilibrium" inside his own framework. The traditional role attributed to ...
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Knut Wicksell has always been considered an economist belonging to the "marginalist" school. In particular, his contribution to monetary economics has always been allocated inside the framework of the quantity theory of money. The present work attempts to offer a different way of looking at Wicksell's contribution to monetary theory. This is mainly done by focussing on the different meaning which Wicksell seems to have attributed to the notion of "equilibrium" inside his own framework. The traditional role attributed to that notion (either as a "convergence" point or as a "gravitation" point) is here dismissed in favour of a much weaker one, viz. as a simple "reference" point. In this way the inflationary and deflationary processes are not seen as a temporary or accidental "deviatious" from a norm; besides they are not looked at as responses to objective self-regulating mechanisms. They are instead seen as phenomena on which the policy adopted by the monetary authority is able to produce irreversible effects on the "equilibrium" position. Within this framework the attention is concentrated on the cyclical processes undertaken by the economy, without according any privilege to an analysis based only on "equilibrium". This interpretation of Wicksell's Monetary Theory is so contrasted with the methodological approach of both the Classical economics as well as some member of the Swedish School.
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