The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
could demand more of other things, and Americans paying less for cotton
could demand more of other things. But, on the other hand, American
producers of cotton, receiving less for their cotton--receiving
precisely as much less as the others had more--could then demand less of
other things, exactly as much less as the others are able to demand
more. The original tendency for gold to leave the country, and the
tendency for gold to leave the money-form and be used in the arts, would
remain unneutralized. An "increase of demand for money," in Mill's
sense, would in this case present the remarkable phenomenon of driving
money away. Physical quantities are irrelevant. Psychological
significances are what count.
It is interesting to note, in this connection, that some striking
contradictions in quantity theory reasoning on any formulation, whether
connected with the notions of supply and demand or not, are involved in
this hypothesis. The illustration above gives a case where a lowered
price level leads money to flow away from your country. But, on the
quantity theory explanation of foreign exchange, it is _rising_ price
levels which drive gold away, and _falling_ price levels which attract
gold![53]
Mill's effort to apply the notion of demand and supply to the value of
money is, then, (1) not an application of his formal doctrine of supply
and demand, and (2), is a failure, leads to results contradictory to the
general law of supply and demand, as soon as we take account of the
peculiarities of individual commodities, and cease to look at
commodities in one huge lump. Psychological forces, rather than
physical quantities, are what count. Whether or not the supply and
demand notion of Cairnes, reinterpreted by putting a quantitative value
concept into it, could serve as a means of approach to the value of
money, I shall not here argue. No one so far as I know has attempted to
do the thing that way, and my own theory is best developed by another
method. It is interesting to note, however, another somewhat different
effort to apply the supply and demand formula. General Walker does so,
including among the factors determining the demand for money, not only
the quantity of goods to be exchanged, but also the _prices_[54]
prevailing. Since by value of money Walker means merely the reciprocal
of the price-level, this is the clearest possible case of a vicious
circle. It would be a circle even if he were trying to explain the
absolute value of money, as distinguished from the reciprocal of the
price-level, since the former is one of the determinants of the latter.
Value of money and values of goods determine prices; prices and quantity
of goods determine demand for money; demand and supply of money
determine value of money,--a hopeless circle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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