Thomas Tooke: An Introduction

Thomas Tooke (1774-1858) made important contributions to monetary history, theory and policy. His monetary economics has been viewed in a favourable light by economists such as Ricardo and Marx. Moreover, Tooke’s conception of the rate of interest as a variable determined independently (of the profit rate) bears significant similarities with Keynes’s idea of the rate of interest as a ‘monetary phenomenon’. This post presents Tooke’s monetary theory in brief through his role in the debates between the Currency School (to which Ricardo belonged) and the Banking School (Tooke being the prominent member) in the early 1840s. The reference for this post is mainly the recent research carried out by Matthew Smith.

During Tooke’s time, the dominant view was that the rate of interest is governed by the rate of profit (on capital employed in production) implying that the former is determined by ‘real’ forces. In Smith, it is the competition of capital and for Ricardo, it is the wage rate and production conditions taken together. Tooke argued that the rate of interest is determined by institutional factors in the financial market and is independent of the rate of profit. In his later writings, he stated that it is the rate of interest which regulates the rate of profit with the former entering as a component in the costs of production of commodities.

The Currency School maintained that prices can be controlled by adjusting the quantity of money, as espoused by the quantity theory of money. That is, by altering the bank notes in circulation, it was believed that fluctuations in nominal income could be suppressed. This assumes that there are no time lags and that the velocity of circulation is constant. Tooke contested this policy and stressed the role for a discretionary monetary policy flexible enough to deal with different economic situations. The central principles of the Banking School are as follows: (i) the quantity of money in circulation is endogenously determined by the level of nominal income; (ii) ‘the rate of interest has no systematic influence on the inducement to spend’; and (iii) the rate of interest, being a component of commodity prices, exerts a ‘positive causal influence on the price level’ (Smith 1996: xliv-xlv). Such principles imply that the velocity of circulation is, in fact, a summary measure of the institutional setting of the financial market which can change when activity levels and prices vary.

Tooke’s contributions place a greater responsibility on the central banks. The principles of the Banking School imply that the interest policy of the monetary authorities can have lasting impact on real variables (such as income and employment) by influencing prices and the rate of profit. There is no long-run neutrality of money ‘ monetary variables impact real variables. Moreover, attempts to control the quantity of money solely based on the rate of interest need not be successful since it is endogenously determined. Finally, the causation runs from prices to the quantity of money and not vice versa.

REFERENCE

SMITH, M. (1996), ‘Introduction’, in Variorum of the First and Second Editions of Thomas Tooke’s Considerations on the State of the Currency (1826), edited in collaboration with P. D. GROENEWEGEN, Reprints of Economic Classics, Series 2, Number 8, Sydney, Centre for the History of Economic Thought, The University of Sydney, pp. vi’xlvi.