Knut Wicksell - Theoretical Contributions

Theoretical Contributions

Wicksell was enamored with the theory of Léon Walras (the Lausanne school), Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (the Austrian school), and David Ricardo, and sought a synthesis of the three theoretical visions of the economy. Wicksell's work on creating a synthetic economic theory earned him a reputation as an "economist's economist." For instance, although the marginal productivity theory—the idea that payments to factors of production equilibrate to their marginal productivity—had been laid out by others such as John Bates Clark, Wicksell presented a far simpler and more robust demonstration of the principle, and much of the present conception of that theory stems from Wicksell's model. Wicksell's (1898, 1906) theory of the "cumulative process" of inflation remains the first decisive swing at the idea of money as a "veil" as well as Say's Law.

Extending from Ricardo's investigation of income distribution, Wicksell concluded that even a totally unfettered economy was not destined to equalize wealth as a number of Wicksell's predecessors had predicted. Instead, Wicksell posited, wealth created by growth would be distributed to those who had wealth in the first place. From this, and from theories of marginalism, Wicksell defended a place for government intervention to improve national welfare. Wicksell influenced the field of constitutional political economy. His 1896 work on fiscal theory Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen called attention to the significance of the rules within choices are made by political agents, and he recognized that efforts at reform must be directed toward changes in the rules for making decisions rather than trying to influence the behaviour of the actors.

Wicksell's most influential contribution was his theory of interest, published in his 1898 work, Interest and Prices. He made a key distinction between the natural rate of interest and the money rate of interest. The money rate of interest, to Wicksell, was merely the interest rate seen in the capital market; the natural rate of interest was the interest rate that was neutral to prices in the real market, or rather, the interest rate at which supply and demand in the real market was at equilibrium – as though there were no need for capital markets. This theory was taken after of the Austrian School, which theorized that an economic boom happened when the natural rate of interest was higher than the market rate.

This contribution, called the "cumulative process," implied that if the natural rate of interest was not equal to the market rate, demand for investment and quantity of savings would not be equal. If the market rate is beneath the natural rate, an economic expansion occurs, and prices, ceteris paribus, will rise. This gave an early theory of endogenous money – money created by the internal workings of the economy, rather than external factors, and various theories of endogenous money have since developed.

Knut Wicksell's theory of the "cumulative process" of inflation remains the first decisive swing at the idea of money as a "veil". Wicksell's process has its roots in that of Henry Thornton . Recall that the start of the Quantity Theory's mechanism is a helicopter drop of cash: an exogenous increase in the supply of money. Wicksell's theory claims, indeed, that increases in the supply of money leads to rises in price levels, but the original increase is endogenous, created by the relative conditions of the financial and real sectors. With the existence of credit money, Wicksell argued, two interest rates prevail: the "natural" rate and the "money" rate. The natural rate is the return on capital - or the real profit rate. It can be roughly considered to be equivalent to the marginal product of new capital. The money rate, in turn, is the loan rate, an entirely financial construction. Credit, then, is perceived quite appropriately as "money". Banks provide credit, after all, by creating deposits upon which borrowers can draw. Since deposits constitute part of real money balances, therefore the bank can, in essence, "create" money.

Wicksell's main thesis, the disequilibrium engendered by real changes leads endogenously to an increase in the demand for money - and, simultaneously, its supply as banks try to accommodate it perfectly. Given full employment, (a constant Y) and payments structure (constant V), then in terms of the equation of exchange, MV = PY, a rise in M leads only to a rise in P. Thus, the story of the Quantity Theory of Money, the long-run relationship between money and inflation, is kept in Wicksell. Wicksell's main thesis, the disequilibrium engendered by real changes leads endogenously to an increase in the demand for money - and, simultaneously, its supply as banks try to accommodate it perfectly. .Primarily, Say's Law is violated and abandoned by the wayside. Namely, when i However, real aggregate supply does constrain. Inflation results because capital goods industries cannot meet new, real demands for capital goods by entrepreneurs by increasing capacity. They may try but this would involve making higher bids in the factor market which itself is supply-constrained - thus raising factor prices and hence the price of goods in general. In short, inflation is a real phenomenon brought about by a rise in real aggregate demand over and above real aggregate supply.

Finally,for Wicksell the endogenous creation of money, and how it leads to changes in the real market (i.e. increase real aggregate demand) is fundamentally a breakdown of the Neoclassical tradition of a dichotomy between monetary and real sectors. Money is not a "veil" - agents do react to it and this is not due to some irrational "money illusion". However, we should remind ourselves that, for Wicksell, in the long run, the Quantity Theory still holds: money is still neutral in the long run, although to do so, Knut Wicksell have broken the cherished Neoclassical principles of dichotomy, money supply exogeneity and Say's Law. (source:newschool.edu/~het/home.htm)

Parts of Wicksell´s ideas would be expanded upon by the Austrian school, which used it to form a theory of the business cycle based on central bank policy – changes in the level of money in the economy would shift the market rate of exchange in some way relative to the natural rate, and thus trigger a change in the relative proportion of the production of consumer goods to investment, which would ultimately result in an economic correction, or recession, in which the proportion of production of consumption goods to investment in the economy is pushed back towards the level that the natural rate of interest would result in. The cumulative process was the leading theory of the business cycle until John Maynard Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Wicksell's theory would be a strong influence in Keynes's ideas of growth and recession, in Gunnar Myrdal's key concept Circular Cumulative Causation and also in Joseph Schumpeter's "creative destruction" theory of the business cycle.

Wicksell's main intellectual rival was the American economist Irving Fisher, who espoused a more succinct explanation of the quantity theory of money, resting it almost exclusively on long run prices. Wicksell's theory was considerably more complicated, beginning with interest rates in a system of changes in the real economy. Although both economists concluded from their theories that at the heart of the business cycle (and economic crisis) was government monetary policy, their disagreement would not be solved in their lifetimes, and indeed, it was inherited by the policy debates between the Keynesians and monetarists beginning a half-century later.

Wicksell also expressed his views on many social issues and was often a critic of the status quo. He questioned the institutions of rank, marriage, the church, the monarchy, and the military. While Wicksell fought for a more equal distribution of wealth and income, he saw himself primarily as an educator of the public. He desired to influence more than just the field of monetary economics.