David Laidler on Monetarism

David Laidler has always been a monetarist and was an important player in the debates marking the rise and fall of that doctrine. The literature on the demand for money was the focus of his primary contribution. He did pioneering work on the long-run demand for money function in the mid-1960s. In the four editions of his The Demand for Money from 1969 until 1993 he acted as the major-domo of the literature. Indeed his work was at the heart of the discussions over the longrun and short-run demand for money function, the stability of money demand, the missing money conundrum, the buffer stock approach, and the resurrection of long-run money demand. He also worked energetically in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s on the keymonetarist theoretical issues of the transmission mechanism of monetary policy, the shortcomings of the IS-LM model, the short-run and long-run Phillips curve, and the monetary approach to the balance of payments.