A Treatise on Money – om debatten mellem Hayek og Keynes

Throughout all of his writings Keynes tried to make economic theory to become better in accordance with empirical evidence. In doing so, he often challenged the economic orthodoxy of his days. For many years he struggled to be able to deliver the right theoretical answer as to why the macro economy could be put in a position of disequilibrium for a rather long period of time with many involuntary unemployed workers. As we all know, he finally succeeded in doing so with the publication of The General Theory in 1936. On the road to this new macroeconomic understanding Keynes had hoped that his A Treatise on Money from 1930 could deliver some important theoretical elements that made him able to explain the problems of the economic crisis in a more convincing way than that of the neoclassical mainstream. However, his macroeconomic reasoning in Treatise was still rather old-fashioned as his analysis was restricted to the understanding of the quantity theory of money. Be this as it may, following the publication of Treatise an interesting debate unfold itself between Hayek and Keynes. In many ways this debate illustrates the differences in opinion between two theoretical »modes of thought«. In what follows the focus of the present article would be partly on highlighting some of the important elements of Treatise and partly on the debate of Hayek and Keynes.