Monday, January 17, 2011

A Mises Community Review of my 1920-21 Paper

Jonathan directs me to this post about my paper. I have an extensive reply in the comment section. The criticisms are not new - they follow very closely along the lines of one of my reviewers. For the most part I don't think they are substantial, and I explain why in my comment. The author also reads my paper far, far, far to strongly. To clarify (I did not think this needed clarification), I do not think Harding or Strong were Keynesians. I do not think it is uniquely Keynesian to lower discount rates to avoid deflation. I do not think that it is "Keynesian" to raise discount rates in response to high inflation. There are a litany of other "I do not think that and I'm pretty sure I never said that"s in my response. The point is simply that Keynes would not have disagreed with the many non-Keynesians on most of these points, and there was nothing about 1920-21 that would have driven Keynes - at any point in his life - to do all that much different than what was already done. I'm not expert on the inter-war economy or on Keynes yet. If I've truly blundered I'd enjoy hearing it. But half these critiques aren't really valid, and the other half involve claims I never made.

2 comments:

  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSjK2Oqrgic

    ReplyDelete
  2. I tried to leave this post before, but... you don't look old enough to have been writing a paper in the early twenties.

    ReplyDelete

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