More than ten years after his critically acclaimed book, Monetary Theory and Policy from Hume and Smith to Wicksell: Money, Credit, and the Economy (2011), this new opus by Arie Arnon was very much awaited. Given the strong emphasis laid on the monetary thinking of the different authors considered, and particularly their views regarding the proper conduct of monetary policy, this new work will be especially appreciated by those (like the present writer) interested in monetary issues within the subfield of macroeconomics.
The book is divided into four parts. The first part, titled “Theory and Policy around the Great Depression,” comprises four chapters. Chapter 1 deals with Knut Wicksell, discussing, in particular, whether or not Wicksell was a “Quantity Theorist,” his famous “cumulative processes” induced by a discrepancy between the natural and market rates of interest, and his monetary policy prescriptions centered around the stabilization of the price level. Chapter...
