Knut Wicksell: Some Aspects of his Work

This post is different from the others because it deals with the contributions of a single economist. Knut Wicksell was a Swedish economist who made significant contributions to capital theory, monetary economics and fiscal policy. Despite being grouped under the neoclassical or the Austrian school because of his affinities to ‘marginal’ analyst, Wicksell was a socialist and a radical. He advocated policies which involved the government in a big way. And owing to his varied interests in poetry, mathematics, feminism, mathematics, politics, etc he became a Professor of Economics and Fiscal Law at Lund University only when he was fifty. A few of his well known students are Erik Lindahl, Gunnar Myrdal and Bertil Ohlin. They are considered to be part of Stockholm or Swedish school of economic thought.

In the passages below, only a few of his contributions will be elaborated. He has also made lasting contributions to the theory of interest, revitalised quantity theory of money, introduced mechanisms linking the real and monetary sector, etc.

Wicksell demonstrated that problems could arise if capital is treated just like other ‘factors of production’ ‘ land and labour. Cambridge capital controversies dealt with many of these problems. ‘Knut Wicksell (1851’1926) himself casts doubt on the specification of the value of capital, along with the physical quantities of labour and land, as part of the data of the system. ‘Capital’ is but a set of heterogeneous capital goods. Therefore, unlike labour and land, which ‘are measured each in terms of its own technical unit . . . capital . . . is reckoned . . . as a sum of exchange value’ (Wicksell, 1901, 1934, p. 49). But capital goods are themselves produced commodities and, as such, their ‘costs of production include capital and interest’; thus, ‘to derive the value of capital goods from their own cost of production or reproduction’ would imply ‘arguing in a circle’ (ibid., p. 149).’ [Segura and Braun 2004]

Like other contemporaries of his, Wicksell did not write about unemployment. This was because the existence of unemployment was considered to be a paradox, an anomaly for neoclassical economists. As they could not comprehend why resources (here, labour) would be left idle! The central problem in (neoclassical) economics was not to provide or create uses for factors, but only to allocate the factors among various uses. As Bo Sandelin, editor of Wicksell’s papers and the author of A History of Swedish Economic Thought writes in the introduction that ‘the fundamental question in economics was how to manage an economy with scarce resources.’ Strange indeed!

Wicksell was a strong proponent of the marginal productivity theory of distribution. A corollary of this theory is the the sum of all the marginal products of the factors should be equal to the total product, known as the product exhaustion theorem. However Wicksell demonstrated that the operation of this theory depends on the returns to the scale. That is, only under constant returns to scale will the marginal products exactly add up to the total product. And that for both decreasing returns and increasing returns, the product will not be completely exhausted.

The Swedish school made another important contribution to economic theory. They introduced the categories of ex ante and ex post. These categories, we know are used widely today and were the result of the School’s dissatisfaction with the equilibrium analysis. Apart from these ways of thinking, Myrdal has provided us with the concept of circular and cumulative causation as well. These categories provide us with alternative modes of conceptualising or thinking about economic problems.

Relying solely on textbooks reduces our extent of reach. We often fail to come across interesting and heterodox economists. But, history of economic thought provides us with ample personalities to look into. Wicksell is one among them. Also, some of their categories provide us with alternatives, which remain unfinished. For instance, after going through some of the secondary and primary works on/by Wicksell, he appears exceedingly interesting and aware of the implications of certain simplifying assumptions. He pointed out the ‘necessity’ of the constant returns to scale assumption, which economics faithfully aligned with for a considerable period. This was challenged within the mainstream only with the entry of the endogenous growth theories, which emphasised increasing returns.

References

Pressman, Steven (2004), Fifty Great Economists, Routledge: India.

Groenewegen, P and Vaggi, G (2006), A Concise History of Economic Thought: From Mercantilism to Monetarism, Palgrave Macmillan.

De Marchi, N and Blaug, M (1991), Appraising Economic Theories: Studies in the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Edward Elgar.

Segura, J and Braun, C (2004), An Eponymous Dictionary of Economics: A Guide to Laws and Theorems Named After Economists, Edward Elgar.

On Inflation Targeting

The rate of Inflation is of great concern to the Central Bank of a country as well as to its Government.

This concern of the authorities is what makes ‘inflation targeting’ important. But should it be the only concern’

What is ‘Inflation targeting”

Inflation targeting is a framework for operating monetary policy. The first authority to formulate it was the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in the early 1990s. It is undertaken by the monetary authorities and it tries to keep the price stable without adversely affecting output and employment. [Khatkhate 2006]

On Phillips curve

The Phillips curve represents the relationship between the rate of inflation and the unemployment rate. Although several people had made similar observations before him, A. W. H. Phillips published a study in 1958 that represented a milestone in the development of macroeconomics. Phillips discovered that there was a consistent inverse, or negative, relationship between the rate of wage inflation and the rate of unemployment in the United Kingdom from 1861 to 1957. When unemployment was high, wages increased slowly; when unemployment was low, wages rose rapidly. [Hoover]

Inflation targeting has gained a lot of importance, mainly owing to the downward slope of the Phillips curve.

On NAIRU

NAIRU or Non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment was introduced by Milton Friedman and Edmund Phelps during the 1970s.

NAIRU is a steady state unemployment rate above which inflation would fall and below which inflation would rise.

The natural rate of unemployment is a key concept in modern macroeconomics. Its use originated with Milton Friedman’s 1968 Presidential Address to the American Economic Association in which he argued that there is no long-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment: As the economy adjusts to any average rate of inflation, unemployment returns to its “natural” rate. Higher inflation brings no benefit in terms of lower average unemployment, nor does lower inflation involve any cost in terms of higher average unemployment. A second important unemployment rate is the “Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment,” or NAIRU. This is the unemployment rate consistent with maintaining stable inflation. According to the standard macroeconomic theory enshrined in most undergraduate textbooks, inflation will tend to rise if the unemployment rate falls below the natural rate. Conversely, when the unemployment rate rises above the natural rate, inflation tends to fall. Thus, the natural rate and the NAIRU are often viewed as two names for the same thing, providing an important benchmark for gauging the state of the business cycle, the outlook for future inflation, and the appropriate stance of monetary policy. [FRBSF Economic Letter 1998]

A digression

I am digressing from ‘inflation targeting’ and am going to talk about a welcome proposal by the Indian Government.

In a bid to obtain a `true picture’ of the effect of price changes on the economy, the Union Finance Ministry has proposed the inclusion of services in the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) which is used to measure point-to-point inflation. In India, the services sector accounted for 54 per cent of the GDP during the previous fiscal year. [The Hindu 2007]

In an earlier post of mine, I had argued for a restructuring of the WPI.

Conclusion

Giving too much significance to the ‘Inflation rate’ without adequate and corresponding developments in food supply, public distribution systems, etc will not help combat the problems of unemployment. Thus the fiscal and monetary authorities must ensure that such areas are targeted during a ‘rise in inflation’.

Increasing interest rates and importing food grains so as to bring down inflation rates will not succeed as the ‘inflation’ is basically caused by distributional inefficiencies.

References

1) Deena Khatkhate, Inflation Targeting, Dec 9 2006, EPW.

2) Kevin D. Hoover, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

””’ 3) Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, The Natural Rate, NAIRU, and Monetary Policy, 1998.

Further Reading

1) The Phillips curve by Bradford DeLong.

2) The NAIRU by Bradford DeLong.

3) History and Theory of the NAIRU: A Critical Review by Espinosa and Russell.

””’ 4) Why inflation still matters, Frontline, Jayati Ghosh, 2006.

Monetary aggregates

Money

Economists have proposed a functional definition of money, i.e. any object that is generally acceptable in facilitating the exchange of goods and services.
It took me a lot of time to come up with the meanings of the monetary aggregates in the Indian context. This post gives an idea about the composition of various monetary aggregates. These aggregates are commonly used in journals relating to economics, so these definitions will help in comprehending the data better.

What are M1 and M3′

M1 and M3 are standard measures of money supply. Other standard measures are M0 and M4. Each monetary aggregate is ranked according to the degree of liquidity it provides. Monetary aggregates measure the amount of money circulating in an economy.

M0 includes only currency in the hands of the public, banks’ statutory reserve deposits held at the central bank and banks’ cash reserves. In India it is usually referred to as reserve money. It is controlled by the central bank of the country. (Link:RBI)

Narrow money (M1) is the sum of currency in circulation and demand deposits at monetary institutions.

Monetary aggregate (M2) is defined as M1 plus post office savings, bank deposits and residents’ deposits in foreign currency at deposit money banks.

M3 is defined as M2 plus other time deposits with banks. The components of M3 vary between countries. It is also called broad money.

M4 or L is referred to as very broad money. It comprises M3 plus treasury bills, negotiable bonds and pension funds.

Narrow money measures cover highly liquid forms of money (money as a means of exchange) while broad money includes the less liquid forms (money as a store of value).