economic stabilizer

Any of the institutions and practices in an economy that serve to reduce fluctuations in the business cycle through offsetting effects on the amounts of income available for spending (disposable income).

The progressive income tax, unemployment compensation, and farm price supports all help stabilize the amount of disposable income, as do family and corporate saving.

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Introduction

      any of the institutions and practices in an economy that serve to reduce fluctuations in the business cycle through offsetting effects on the amounts of income available for spending (disposable income). The most important automatic stabilizers include unemployment compensation and other transfer payment programs, farm price supports, and family and corporate savings (saving).

      The ultimate objective of research into the problems of economic instability (including fluctuations in output, employment, and prices) is to provide the foundation for stabilization policy—that is, for the systematic use of fiscal and monetary policies to improve an economy's performance. The main tasks, therefore, are to explain how levels of prices, output, and employment are determined and, on a more applied level, to furnish predictions of changes in these variables—predictions on which stabilization policy can be based.

Keynesian (Keynesian economics) analysis

      The problems of economic stability and instability have, naturally, been of concern to economists for a very long time. But, as a special field of investigation, it emerged most strongly from the confluence of two developments of the depression decade of the 1930s. One was the development of national income statistics; the other was the reorientation of theoretical thinking often referred to as the “Keynesian revolution.”

      To understand why the theoretical contributions of John Maynard Keynes (Keynes, John Maynard) were regarded as so important through much of the 20th century, one must examine the workings of a modern economy. Such an economy comprises millions of people engaged in millions of distinct activities; these activities include the production, distribution, and consumption of all of the different goods and services that a modern economy provides. Some of the economic units are large, with hierarchies of executives and other managerial specialists who coordinate the productive activities of thousands or tens of thousands of people. Aside from these relatively small islands of preplanned and coordinated activity, most of the population pursues its myriad economic tasks without any overall supervised direction. It resembles an immensely complicated, continuously changing puzzle that is continually being solved and solved again through the market system. A breakdown in the coordination of activities, such as occurred in the depression decade of the 1930s, is very rare—in fact, it happened on that scale only once—or this system of organization would not survive. The way in which the economic puzzle is solved without anyone thinking about it has been the broad main theme of economic theory since the time of the English economist Adam Smith (Smith, Adam) (1723–90).

The problem of coordination

      If one singles out a particular household from the millions of economic units and studies it over a period of time, one can draw up a budget of that household's transactions. The budget will come out as a long list of amounts sold and amounts bought. If at any time this economic unit had tried to do something different from what it actually did (cutting down, say, on meat purchases to buy another pair of shoes), the solution of the economic puzzle would have been correspondingly different. At the prevailing prices the supply (supply and demand) of meat would have exceeded the demand, and the demand for shoes would have exceeded the supply.

      The point Keynes made, right or wrong, was that, if the economy were to function as a coordinated system (price system), the activities of each economic unit must be somehow controlled—and controlled quite precisely. This is done through price incentives. By raising the price of a good (relative to the prices of everything else), any economic unit can, generally speaking, be made to demand less of it or to supply more of it; by lowering the price, it can be made to demand more or to supply less. Through the conflux of prices, an individual unit is thus led to fit its activities into the overall puzzle of market demands and supplies. If economic units could not be controlled in this fashion, the market-organized system could not possibly function.

      Keynesians therefore believe that in any given situation there exists, theoretically, one and only one list of prices that will make the puzzle come out exactly right. But the amounts that economic units choose to supply or demand of various goods at any given price list depend on numerous factors, all of which change over time: the size of the population and labour force; the stock of material resources, technology, and labour skills; “tastes” for particular consumer goods; and attitudes toward consumption as against saving, toward leisure as against work, and so on. Government policies—tax rates, expenditures, welfare policies, money supply, the debt—also belong among the determinants of demand and supply. A change in any of these determinants will mean that the list of prices that previously would have equilibrated all of the different markets must be changed accordingly. If prices are “rigid,” the system cannot adjust and coordination will break down.

Price flexibility

      For coordination of activities to be preserved (or restored) when the economy is disturbed by changes in these determinants, something still more is required: each separate price must move in a direction that will restore equilibrium. This necessity for prices to adjust in certain directions may be expressed as a communications requirement. To put it in somewhat extreme form: for a given economic unit to plan its activities so that they will “mesh” with those of others, it must have information about the intentions of everyone else in the system. When one of the determinants underlying market supplies and demands changes so as to disequilibrate the system, ensuing price movements must communicate the requisite information to everyone concerned.

      One may suppose, for example, that in some period of political crisis the supply of crude oil from the Middle East is cut off. The immediate result will be a worldwide excess demand for oil and oil products of large proportions—that is, supply will fall far short of demand at going prices. At the same time, those who derive their income from Middle East oil production will have their incomes reduced, and excess supplies will emerge in the markets for the goods on which those incomes previously were spent. For the system to adjust, orders will have to go out to all demanders to cut down on their consumption of oil and for all other suppliers of oil to increase their output so that the gap between demand and supply can be closed. This is, in effect, what a rise in the world price of oil and oil products will accomplish—millions of gasoline and heating oil users the world over will respond to the pinch of higher prices, and the higher prices will also create a profit incentive for supply to be increased. (Falling prices will, in an analogous manner, close the gaps in the markets in which the initial disturbance caused excess supplies to develop.)

      Prices that are not rigid for some institutional reason will move in response to excess demands and excess supplies. When demand exceeds supply, disappointed buyers will bid up the price; when supply exceeds demand, unsuccessful suppliers will bid it down. This mechanism solved the excess demand for the oil problem in the illustration above. The question, however, is whether throughout the system as a whole it will always act so as to move each of the prices toward its general equilibrium value.

      Keynes (Keynes, John Maynard) said no. He maintained that there can be conditions under which excess demands (or supplies) will not be “effectively” communicated so that, although certain prices are at disequilibrium levels, no process of bidding them away from these inappropriate levels will get started. This is the flaw in the traditional conception of the operation of the price system that prompted Keynes to introduce the concept of “effective demand.” To pre-Keynesian economists the implied distinction between “effective” and (presumably) “ineffective” demand would have had no analytical meaning. The logic of traditional economic theory (classical economics) suggested two possibilities that might make the price system inoperative: (1) that, in some markets, neither demanders nor suppliers respond to price incentives, so that a “gap” between demand and supply cannot be closed by price adjustments and (2) that, for various institutional reasons, prices in some markets are “rigid” and will not budge in response to the competitive pressures of excess demands or excess supplies. Keynes discovered a third possibility that, he argued, was responsible for the depth and duration of severe depressions: under certain conditions, some prices may show no tendency to change even though desires to buy and to sell do not coincide in the respective markets and even though no institutional reasons exist for the prices to be rigid.

Say's Law

      Many writers before Keynes raised the question of whether a capitalist economic system, relying as it did on the profit incentive to keep production going and maintain employment, was not in danger of running into depressed states from which the automatic workings of the price mechanism could not extricate it. But they tended to formulate the question in ways that allowed traditional economics to provide a demonstrable, reassuring answer. The answer is known in the economic literature as Say's Law of Markets, after the early 19th-century French economist Jean-Baptiste Say (Say, J.-B).

      For western Europe, the 19th century was a period of rapid economic growth interrupted by several sharp and deep depressions. The growth was made possible in large measure by new modes of organizing production and new technologies, such as the spreading use of steam power. Was it possible that output might grow so great that there would not be a market for it all? Say's Law denied the possibility. “Supply creates its own demand,” ran the answer. More precisely, the law asserted that the sum of all excess supplies, evaluated at market prices, must be identically equal to the sum of the market values of all excess demands. It could be neither more nor less. In the theoretical system of traditional economics, any inequality between these sums would quickly work itself out.

      An important special case should be noted. The good in excess demand might, for instance, be money (money supply). One possibility, then, is excess supply for all the other goods, matched by an excess demand for money. A situation with excess demand for money matched by an excess supply of everything else is one in which the level of all money prices is too high relative to the existing stock of money. If this is the only trouble, however, Say's Law suggests a relatively simple remedy: increase the money supply to whatever extent required to eliminate the excess demand. The alternative is to wait for the deflation to work itself out. As the general level of prices declines, the “real” value of the money stock increases; this too, will, in the end, eliminate the excess demand for money.

Model of a Keynesian depression

Involuntary unemployment

  Another possible cause of a general depression was suggested by Keynes. It may be approached in a highly simplified way by lumping all occupations together into one labour market and all goods and services together into a single commodity market. The aggregative system would thus include simply three goods: labour, commodities, and money. See Table—> for a rough outline (a full treatment would be both technical and lengthy) of the development of a “Keynesian” depression. One may begin by assuming (line 1) that the system is in full employment equilibrium—that is, prices and wages are at their equilibrium levels and there is no excess demand. Next the model may be put on the path to disaster by postulating either (1) some disturbance causing a shift of demand away from commodities and into money or (2) a reduction in the money supply. Either event will result in the situation described in the Table—> as State 2, but the one assumed is a reduction in the money supply by, say, 10 percent. The result is shown in the right-hand column of the Table, where the quantity of commodities supplied minus the quantity demanded multiplied by the price level (p) is equal in value to the excess demand for money.

      If money wages and money prices could immediately be reduced in the same proportion (10 percent), output and employment could be maintained, and profits and wages would be unchanged in “real” terms. If money wages are initially inflexible, however, business firms cannot be induced to lower prices by 10 percent and maintain output. In this example they maintain prices in the neighbourhood of the initial price level—prices, then, are also “inflexible”—and deal with the excess supply by cutting back output and laying off workers. Reducing supply eliminates the excess supply of commodities by throwing the burden of excess supply back on the labour market. Thus, output and employment (which are “quantities”) give way before prices do. This brings us to State 3 where, as in the Table, the excess supply of labour times the money wage rate (w) equals the excess demand for money in value.

      If, with the system in this state, money wages do not give way and the money supply is not increased, the economy will remain at this level of unemployment indefinitely. One should recall that the only explanation for persistent unemployment that the pre-Keynesian economics had to offer was that money wages were “too high” relative to the money stock and tended to remain rigid at that level.

      Money wages might, nevertheless, give way so that, gradually, both wages and prices go down by 10 percent—that is to say, a reduction of the size that would have solved the entire problem had it occurred immediately (before unemployment could develop). This is shown in the last line of the Table, which represents (albeit crudely) what Keynes described as a state of “involuntary unemployment” and explained in terms of a failure of “effective demand.”

      In State 4, it is assumed, the excess demand for money is zero. Hence there is, at least temporarily, no tendency for money income either to fall further or to rise. The prevailing level of money income is too low to provide full employment. The excess supply of labour and the corresponding excess demand for commodities (of the same market value) show State 4 to be a disequilibrium state. The question is why the state tends to persist. Why is there no tendency for income and output to increase and to absorb the unemployment? Specifically, why does not the excess demand for commodities induce this expansion of output and absorption of unemployment?

      Basically, the answer is that the unemployed do not have the cash (or the credit) to make the excess demand for commodities effective. The traditional economic theory would postulate that, when actual output is kept at a level below that of demand, competition between unsuccessful potential buyers would tend to raise prices, thereby stimulating an expansion. But this does not occur. The unemployed lack the means to engage in such bidding for the limited volume of output. The excess demand for commodities is not effective. It fails to produce the market signals that would induce adjustments of activities in the right direction. Business firms, on their side of the market, remain unwilling to hire from the pool of unemployed—even at low wages—because there is nothing to indicate that the resulting increment of output can actually be sold at remunerative prices.

      Keynes called this “involuntary unemployment.” It was not a happy choice of phrase since the term is neither self-explanatory nor very descriptive. Some earlier analysts of the unemployment problem had, however, tended to stress the kind of deadlock that might develop if workers held out for wages exceeding the market value of the product attributable to labour (labour economics) or if business firms insisted on trying to “exploit” labour by refusing to pay a wage corresponding to the value of labour's product. With the term “involuntary unemployment,” Keynes wanted to emphasize that a thoroughly intractable unemployment situation could develop for which neither party was to blame in this sense. His theory envisaged a situation in which both parties were willing to cooperate, yet failed to get together. An effective demand failure might be described as “a failure to communicate.”

      The failure of the market system to communicate the necessary information arises because, in modern economies, money is the only means of payment. In offering their labour services, the unemployed will not demand payment in the form of the products of the individual firms. If they did, the excess demand for products would be effectively communicated to producers. The worker must have cash in order to exercise effective demand for goods. But to obtain the cash he must first succeed in selling his services.

Effects of business contraction

      When business (business cycle) begins to contract, the first manifestation is a decrease in investment that causes unemployment in the capital goods industries; the unemployed are deprived of the cash wage receipts required to make their consumption demands effective. Unemployment then spreads to consumer goods industries. In expansion, the opposite occurs: an increase in investment (or in government spending) leads to rehiring of workers out of the pool of unemployed. Re-employed workers will have the cash with which to exert effective demand. Hence business will pick up also in the consumer goods industries. Thus the theory suggests the use of fiscal policy (an increase in government spending or a decrease in taxes) to bring the economy out of an unemployment state that is due to a failure of effective demand.

      Another observation may be made on Keynes's doctrine of effective demand. The fact that the persistence of unemployment will put pressure on wages also turns out to be a problem. The assumption in the foregoing discussion was that money wages were at the equilibrium level. Unemployment will tend to drive them down. Prices will tend to follow wages down, since declining money earnings for the employed will mean a declining volume of expenditures. In short, both wages and prices will tend to move away from, rather than toward, their “correct” equilibrium values. Once the economy has fallen into such a situation, Keynes pointed out, wage rigidity may actually be a blessing—a paradoxical conclusion from the standpoint of traditional economics.

National income accounting

The circular flow of income and expenditure

      A proper understanding of income and expenditure theory requires some acquaintance with the concepts used in national income accounting. These accounts provide quantitative data on national income and national product (gross national product). Reliable information on these was, for the most part, not available to economists working on problems of economic instability before the 1930s. Modern economics differs from earlier work most markedly in its quantitative, empirical orientation. The development of national income accounting made this possible.

      The definitions of the major components of national income and product may, accordingly, be introduced in the course of explaining income and employment theory. The basic characteristic of the national income accounts is that they measure the level of economic activity in terms of both product supplied and of income generated. Correspondingly, national income analysis divides the economic system into distinct sectors. The simplest approach uses two sectors: a business sector and a household sector. All product is regarded as created by the business sector (thus, self-employed persons have to be treated as businesses in earning their income and as households in disposing of it). Final goods output is divided into two components: consumer goods produced for sale to households and investment goods for sale to firms. Similarly, all income is generated in the business sector and none of it in the household sector (nonmarket activities, such as the work of homemakers or home improvements, are not counted in national product and income). The level of income generated equals the market value of final goods output.

      Next is the household sector. All resources in the economy ultimately belong to households. The households, therefore, have claim to all of the income generated through the utilization of these resources by firms in creating the national product. Not all of the income is, however, actually paid out to households, since corporations retain part of their earnings. In building a simple model of the economy, one can disregard the “gross business saving” item of the national income accounts and deal with income as if it were all paid out (which means adopting the fiction that retained earnings are first paid out to shareholders who then reinvest the same amount in the same firms). The households, finally, dispose of their income in two ways: as expenditure on consumption goods and as saving.

      The foregoing discussion has made two accounting statements involving income. First, income generated (Y) equals the value of consumption goods output (C^s) plus the value of investment goods output (I): Y ≡ C^s + I. Second, consumption goods expenditures (C^d) plus savings (S) equal income disposal: Y ≡ C^d + S. Both equalities hold simply because of the way that the variables are defined in the national income accounts. They hold true, moreover, whatever the actual level of income happens to be. Such equalities, which are true simply by definition, are called identities (and are marked as such by using the sign ≡ instead of the usual equality sign). Another accounting convention may be noted here. Investment (I) is defined to include any discrepancy between consumer goods produced and consumer goods sold. If production exceeds sales, the unsold goods are part of inventory investment; if sales exceed output, inventory investment is negative, and I is reduced by the corresponding amount. It follows that C^s and C^d must be identically equal, so that it becomes unnecessary to distinguish between them by superscript. Since income generated is identically equal to income disposal, finally, it is clear that actual investment must always equal actual saving: I ≡ S. Investment is the value of additions to the system's stock of capital. Saving is the increase in the value of the household sector's wealth. For the system as a whole, the two must be equal.

 Figure 1—> shows the circular flow of income and expenditures connecting the two sectors. Investment and consumption expenditures add up to the aggregate demand for final goods output. The value of final goods output is paid out by the business sector as income to the household sector. The major part of income goes back to the business sector as expenditures on consumption goods; the remainder is allocated by households to saving. Corresponding to the counterclockwise money flow (but not shown) is the clockwise flow of the things that the money is paid for: labour and other resource services from households to firms in exchange for money income; consumer goods and services in exchange for consumption expenditures from firms to households; and equities, bonds, and other debt instruments issued by firms in return for the funds saved by households.

 Figure 1—> shows a break in the flow of saving as it passes into investment. From the accounting standpoint—where investment necessarily equals saving—there is no rationale for this. It has been done here to focus attention on the point in the circular flow that, in the income–expenditure theory, represents the causal nexus in the income-determining process. This theory, in its simplest form, is the next topic.

A simple income–expenditure model

      Because accounting identities—between gross national product and gross national income, between saving and investment, and so on—express relationships that must hold whatever the level of income, they cannot be used to explain what determines the particular level of income in a given period or what causes the level of income to change from one period to the next. The explanation of what happens must be based on statements about the behaviour of the participants in the economic system; in the present context, this means the behaviour of firms and households.

      The following oversimplified model of an economy assumes that the business sector will be satisfied to maintain any given level of output as long as aggregate demand (that is, expenditures on final goods) exactly equals the volume of income generated at that level of output. If, in a given period, aggregate demand exceeds the income payments made by firms in producing that period's output, firms will be expanding in the next period; if aggregate demand falls short of the income payments made, firms will contract in the next period. The naïveté of this supply hypothesis is evident from the fact that the behaviour of firms is described without any reference to the costs of their inputs or to the price of their outputs; the business sector passively adapts output and income generated to the level of aggregate demand. In this model, the level of income is entirely determined by aggregate demand. Firms will act so as to maintain that income flow if, and only if, the exact same amount that they pay out as incomes “comes back to them” in the form of spending on final goods output. If aggregate demand shrinks, production and employment will decline and there will be downward pressure on the price level; if aggregate demand swells, there will be an inflationary problem.

 In the system of Figure 1—>, all of the income generated accrues to households. Households allocate their income to consumption and saving. With consumption there is no problem—it constitutes spending on final goods. Saving, however, does not constitute spending on final goods output. This part of the income generated by the business sector does not automatically come back to it in the form of revenue from sales. Saving, therefore, may be treated as a leakage from the circular flow.

      Investment, which consists of spending of capital by the business sector on new plant and equipment and on desired additions to inventories, is, in the same terminology, an injection into the circular flow. If, for example, investment and saving each amount to $20,000,000 per year, the leakage and the injection will balance. But if saving is $20,000,000 per year and the injection of investment expenditures is only $10,000,000 per year, there will be a disequilibrium. Unsold goods will accumulate at an annual rate of $10,000,000. The business sector, however, will not rest content with this state of affairs but will act to reduce output, employment, and (perhaps) prices. Households will be forced to reduce their consumption spending. The reduction of income will go on until the planned (or desired) rates of saving and investment become equal. A similar argument will show that, if the leakage of planned saving were to fall short of the injection of planned investment, the level of income would rise.

 When income is at a level such that there is no ongoing tendency for it to change in either direction, the system is in “income equilibrium.” The simple system depicted in Figure 1—> is in income equilibrium when the condition shown by this equation is fulfilled: I = S. This is not, however, the accounting identity discussed earlier. The symbols I and S now refer to planned, or desired, magnitudes, which may very well be unequal. When planned investment exceeds planned saving, income will be rising. When planned saving exceeds planned investment, income will be falling. An equivalent way of stating the above “equilibrium condition” is to write Y = C + I. In this equation the left-hand side is actual income and the right-hand side is planned aggregate demand.

      This is the simplest class of income-determination model. It makes no allowance for international trade or government economic activity. Those may be treated in the same way that saving and investment were treated—as leakages or injections. Thus exports constitute spending by foreign nationals on domestic goods—an injection. Imports constitute spending out of domestic income on foreign goods—a leakage. Taxes (taxation) are taken out of the circular flow—a leakage—whereas government expenditures are an injection. The effects of these leakages and injections on the level of income are analogous to those of saving and investment. If income is initially at an equilibrium level, an increase in a leakage (if not at the same time offset by a decrease in another leakage or an increase in an injection) will cause income to fall. An increase in an injection (not offset by a decrease in another injection or an increase in a leakage) will cause income to rise. An income equilibrium is reached when the sum of all leakages is balanced by the sum of all injections.

The multiplier

      The simple income–expenditure model of the economy is not a complete model. It suffices to show only the direction of the change in income that would result from, say, a decline in planned investment (or a rise in taxes or a decline of exports). It does not show the extent of the income change.

      To do this the model must be expanded to include a description of how consumers spend their incomes. For the sake of the exposition, one may assume that the spending of households varies according to the size of their incomes. A simple way of putting this is the following equation: C = a + by. In this equation the coefficient a is a constant indicating the amount that households will spend on consumption (consumption function) independently of the level of income received in the current period, and the coefficient b gives the fraction of each dollar of income that will be spent on consumption goods.

      If one were able to obtain reliable quantitative information on the volume of investment spending being planned and on the coefficients a and b of the “consumption function” above, one could then calculate the value of aggregate demand (C + I) for every possible level of income Y. Only one of these alternative levels of income is an equilibrium one; that is, one for which aggregate demand will ensure that all of the income paid out by firms “comes back” to the business sector as spending on final goods. The equilibrium condition is: Y = C + I.

 Figure 2—> shows how the level of income in the system is determined, on the assumption that investment is $20,000,000, that the coefficient a is $20,000,000, and that the coefficient b (the fraction of each dollar of income that consumers will spend) is 0.6. The horizontal axis measures income, the vertical, aggregate demand (C + I). The line drawn at a 45° angle (from 0) contains all of the points at which suppliers might be in equilibrium; i.e., the points in the space at which aggregate demand would have the same value as income. The investment schedule (marked I = Ī₀) is drawn parallel to the income axis at height 20, showing that investment spending does not depend on income. The consumption function (marked C = a + by) starts at 20 on the vertical axis (the value of a) and rises 60 cents for each dollar of income (the value of b) to the right. The aggregate demand schedule (marked C + Ī₀) is obtained by the vertical summation of the C and Ī₀ schedules. It contains all of the points at which demanders would be in equilibrium, showing, for each level of income, the volume of spending on final goods that they would be satisfied to maintain.

  The only position that demanders and suppliers will both be satisfied to maintain is given by the intersection of the aggregate demand schedule with the 45° line. In Figure 2—> this point (Ŷ₀) is found at an income level of $100,000,000. For this simple system, which has but one leakage and one injection, the equilibrium level of income may equally well be regarded as determined by the condition that planned saving equals planned investment. Since saving is defined as household income not spent on consumption (i.e., Y - C ≡ S), one obtains (by substituting a + by for c) the saving schedules S = -a + (1 - b) Y, which in Figure 2—> is shown to intersect the investment schedule at Y = $100,000,000.

 Figure 2—> shows what will happen if this equilibrium is disturbed. Consider a (temporary) situation in which income is running at more than $100,000,000 per year. At all levels of income to the right of Ŷ₀ aggregate demand (C + Ī₀) is seen to fall below supply as given by the 45° line. (Also, saving exceeds investment.) The business sector will not be willing to maintain this state of affairs but will contract. An excess supply of final goods is associated with falling income. Similarly, at income levels to the left of Ŷ₀, where investment exceeds saving, aggregate demand will exceed supply. An excess demand for final goods is associated with rising income.

 Finally, Figure 2—> shows how much income would fall as a result of a decline in investment by $10,000,000 per year (cf. the dotted lines). The decline in investment is shown by the shift of the investment schedule from Ī₀ to Ī₁, which results in a downward shift of the aggregate demand schedule from C + Ī₀ to C + Ī₁. The new income equilibrium (Ŷ₁) is found at Y = $75,000,000.

      Thus a change in investment spending (ΔI) of $10,000,000 is found to lead to a change in income (ΔY) of a larger amount, here $25,000,000, which is to say, by a multiple of 2.5. The reason is that, when the $10,000,000 is transmitted to households as income, households will increase their consumption spending by $6,000,000 (b × $10,000,000). This rise in consumption spending again raises income, and of this additional income 60 percent is also spent on consumption—and so on. Each time, 40 percent of the increment to income “leaks” into saving. The relationship between the initial change in “autonomous spending” (ΔI) and the change in the level of income (ΔY), which will have taken place once this process has run its course, is given by:

      where, following Keynes, the expression (¹/_{1 - b}) is called the “Multiplier.”

      The model of income determination presented above is exceedingly simple; it captures little of the complexity of a modern industrialized economy. It does, however, suggest one approach to the problem of stabilizing the economy at a high level of income and employment. Assuming that the consumption function is fairly stable (i.e., that the level of consumption spending associated with any level of income can, with a fair degree of accuracy, be predicted on the basis of past experience), fluctuations in income may be attributed to changes in the other variables. Historical statistics show investment spending by private business to have been the most volatile of the major components of national income; changes in investment, therefore, tend (as in the example above) to be the focus of concern for one school of economists. The implication is that the government can manipulate “injections” and “leakages” so as to offset changes in private investment. Thus a drop in investment might be offset by a corresponding increase in government expenditures (increasing an injection) or a decrease in taxes (decreasing a leakage). These measures belong to fiscal policy.

Monetary policy (monetarism)

      Another point of view holds that the fiscal approach presented above is misleading because it ignores the part played by monetary factors in determining the level of economic activity. The following discussion presents an alternative model, which, though equally simplistic, suggests that primary reliance be put on monetary policy.

      “Money” in what follows may be taken to refer to currency (coins and notes) plus the checking deposit liabilities of commercial banks. For the sake of brevity, the model developed in the preceding section will be referred to as the income model. The naive quantity theory model that will be explained here may be labelled the money model.

      The income model dealt with changes in money income in terms of the demand for and supply of output. The money model focusses on the supply of and demand for money. The income model explained the determination of the level of income in terms of relationships between its component flows. The money model emphasizes the relationship between money supply and income. The structure of the income model was based on the distinction between household and business (and government) sectors. In the money model, the distinction is between the banking sector (supplying the money) and the nonbanking sectors (the demanders). The concept of income is the same in both models.

      In the money model, the supply of money is treated with the same simplicity that was accorded investment in the income model—as “autonomously” determined, which is to say that it is not affected by other factors: M^s = . This assumes that the central bank is able completely to control the stock of money, which is held at whatever level the bank desires.

      The dynamic relationship in the income model was the consumption function. Here it is the money demand function. The amount of money demanded is assumed to vary with income (and, in this naive version of quantity theory, with nothing else). The simplest relationship between income and the demand for money would be: M^d = kY. Here, k is a constant. Since Y is a flow (measured per year) and M^d a stock (the average stock of money over the year), k has the dimension of a “storage period.” If k = ¹/₄, for example, the equation states that the nonbanking public desires on the average to hold a cash balance that is equal to the total of three months' income.

 Since there is a determined amount of money in the system, it can be in equilibrium only when the nonbanking sector is satisfied to hold exactly the amount of money that exists, no more and no less: M^d = M^s. The system represented by these three equations is shown in Figure 3—>. The determination of income in the system is shown by assuming M^s = $25,000,000 and k = ¹/₄. The amount of money demanded is equal to supply when income is $100,000,000. A reduction of the money supply to $20,000,000 will cause income to decline to a level of $80,000,000 per year.

 Figure 3—> shows what will happen if income temporarily exceeds the figure of $100,000,000 per year. To the right of Ŷ₀, the amount of money demanded exceeds the existing stock of it. The way for an individual to build up his cash balance is to reduce his disbursements below his receipts. But his spending (to the extent that it is spending on final goods at least) is somebody else's income. A general attempt to build up cash balances cannot succeed—it does not induce an increase in the money supply in this model—because it will result in a decline of income throughout the system. This decline will continue to whatever level is required to make the nonbanking sector bring the amount of money it demands into line with the amount in existence. An excess demand for money is associated with falling income. Similarly, if the amount of money demanded falls short of the amount supplied, an individual may decide to reduce his cash balance by increasing his disbursements—but the money stays in the system; incomes will rise all around. An excess supply of money is associated with rising income.

      The stabilization policy that this model suggests is obvious: if the relationship between income and the demand for money is stable, the system can be maintained in equilibrium by keeping the money supply constant or, in a growing economy, by allowing the money stock to grow at roughly the same rate as real output. If the relationship between income and the demand for money is found to shift about over time, the money stock should be made to grow more rapidly in periods of increasing demand for money and more slowly in periods of decreasing demand.

Comparisons of the income and money models

      Although the two models seem to have nothing in common—the crucial variables of one do not even appear in the other—their descriptions of what happens during income level movements are not contradictory. Falling income is associated with an excess supply of goods and services in the income model, with an excess demand for money in the money model. Rising income is associated with an excess demand for goods in the first model, with an excess supply of money in the other. Evidently the two models give only partial descriptions of what is going on: one model looks at the process from the “real” side only and the other from the “monetary” side. But an excess demand for goods on one side will be associated with an excess supply of money on the other, and vice versa, so in this respect the two are consistent.

      The controversy between the two schools of thought represented by the models has mainly to do with two issues. One issue is which set of policy instruments—fiscal or monetary—provides the best means of stabilizing the economy. The other, more fundamental, issue concerns the causes of income movements. As seen above, changes in investment were the main cause of income movements in the income model; changes in the money stock were the main cause in the money model. Simplistic as the two models are, they embody the conflicting hypotheses of the two contending schools. Income–expenditure theorists attribute the instability of income primarily to events that influence the business sector's expectations with regard to the profitability of new investment, thus influencing investment. The modern quantity theorists see the irregular time path of the money stock as the most important factor.

      The gross features of economic history do not contradict either hypothesis. Private investment has indeed been the most volatile component of Gross National Product. Similarly, the movements of the money stock have conformed to those of money income: rapid inflation has been associated with a rapid growth of the money supply; severe recessions (recession), with a decline in the money supply; and mild recessions, with a slowdown in the growth of the money supply. (“Mild” recessions may be thought of as recessions during which total employment stagnates, and the growth in unemployment, therefore, is largely due to the growth of the labour force.) The controversy has in large measure come to concern the direction of causation: one side maintains that shifts in investment cause income changes and infers that these in turn induce changes in the money stock which go in the same direction; the other side maintains that changes in the size or rate of growth of the money stock cause income changes that in turn will tend to fall most heavily on the investment component of income.

      The problem of resolving this controversy is twofold. First, the theoretical issue is less clear-cut than implied above. Each side acknowledges that neither investment nor the money supply is autonomous and that each affects the other. The question has become, therefore, which model is “most nearly true” and which model, consequently, should be regarded as a “first approximation” in guiding stabilization policy.

      Second, the empirical methods at the disposal of economists are not yet adequate for settling such issues. Attempts have been made to compare the performance of the two models by testing whether the best predictions of income are obtained by using actual data for “autonomous expenditures” and assuming that consumption will obey the consumption–income relation that has generally obtained in the past or by using actual money stock figures and assuming that money demand (money supply) will obey the relation to income that has generally obtained in the past. These attempts have bogged down in disagreements on various statistical matters and must be judged inconclusive. They have shown, however, that even with consumption functions and money demand functions that are a good deal more “reasonable” than the naive relationships above, the predictions of both models are too inaccurate for the purposes of stabilization policy.

      Each model emphasizes one set of disturbances (“real” or “monetary”, respectively) that will cause income to change. Each gives a partial view of the process of income-level movements. What is needed, therefore, is a third model explaining the linkages between “real” and “monetary” forces that these two simple models leave out.

interest-rate policy

      The third model brings a crucially important—but hitherto generally neglected—element into the picture of the economic system; namely, financial markets. For simplicity, the model has only one financial market; there is only one class of financial instruments (referred to as “securities”) and only one yield (a single interest rate). The standard security may be thought of as a bond promising to pay annually a fixed number of dollars. The interest rate is the value of the coupon expressed as a percentage of the market price of the bond. Consequently, if excess demand for bonds brings their price up, the interest rate falls; if excess supply sends the bond price down, the interest rate rises.

      The working of the financial (capital and interest) market is depicted in the model as follows. Investment by the business sector is assumed to be financed through the issue of securities. The higher the interest rate that firms must pay on their securities, the smaller will be the investment program that they see as promising to be profitable. Thus investment will be discouraged by a rise and encouraged by a fall in the interest rate. Households, in deciding how to divide their income between consumption and saving, will consider the amount of future consumption that can be gained by abstaining from consumption now (i.e., by saving). The higher the rate of interest, the larger the amount that can be spent on future consumption per dollar not spent in the present. Thus saving is encouraged by a rise and discouraged by a fall in the interest rate. Coins, notes, and some checking deposits are assets on which interest is not paid. An individual who holds them has the alternative of converting some part of his money holdings (money market) into interest-bearing form. Thus the amount of money demanded will tend to diminish when the interest rate rises and to increase when it falls. The banking system creates money by buying assets from the public, paying for the assets through the issuance of additional monetary liabilities (e.g., checking deposits). Banks must decide whether turning part of their cash reserves to an income-earning use is worth the risks of decreased “liquidity” entailed by lower bank reserves. Hence there is a tendency for the money supply to increase when the interest rate rises and to decrease when it falls.

      In this model, then, the interest rate acts as a price in controlling the behaviour of the individual agents whose activities are to be coordinated. The interest rate itself is determined by the demand for and supply (supply and demand) of money and securities. An increase in planned investment will be associated with the issuance of a large volume of securities. It will tend, therefore, to create an excess supply of securities, to lower securities prices, and to raise the rate of interest. Similarly, an increase in planned saving will tend to create an excess demand for securities, to raise their prices, and to lower the rate of interest. An increased demand for money will, in part, reduce the demand for and increase the supply of securities; it tends to create an excess supply of securities and to raise the interest rate. An increase in the supply of money will tend to reduce the rate of interest.

      These qualitative propositions are the framework of the new model, integrating the two previous models as follows: (1) I = I(r); (2) C = C(Y,r); (3) S = Y - C; (4) S = I; (5) M^d = M^d(Y,r); (6) M^s = M^s(r); and (7) M^d = M^s. Here, Equations 1 through 4 restate the income model with the modification that investment is no longer simply “autonomous” but depends on the current level of the interest rate (r). Equations 5 through 7 restate the money model with the modification that the demand for money and the supply of money also depend on the interest rate. Two conditions now have to be simultaneously fulfilled for the system to be in equilibrium: desired saving must equal desired investment (Equation 4), and the amount of money that individuals and firms desire to hold must equal the amount that the banking sector desires to supply (Equation 7).

      Only a partial account of the ways in which this model works can be given here. The following illustrative examples begin with the system in equilibrium at full employment. The first illustration adopts the view of someone who has learned the income model and hence is thoroughly imbued with the idea that rising income results from an excess of planned investment over planned saving. Faced with the proposition, drawn from the money model, that an increase in the money supply will also cause income to rise, he will ask how such a change in the money supply can cause a discrepancy between saving and investment when there was none to begin with. The answer is that an increase in M^s will mean that there is an excess supply of money and a corresponding excess demand for commodities and securities, but the immediate impact of excess demand will be felt almost exclusively in the securities market. The excess demand for securities drives the rate of interest down—and this encourages investment and discourages saving. At that point, consequently, a “gap” opens up between desired saving and investment.

      For the second illustration, consider instead someone who has learned the money model and who, consequently, knows that income falls when the amount of money demanded exceeds the supply. In Keynes's work the “disturbance” given the most play is some unspecified event that makes business firms take a darker view of the returns to be expected from new investment. Hence, the amount of investment that they will want to undertake at the prevailing interest rate declines. The question is how such a change in planned investment can cause a discrepancy between money demand and money supply when there was none to begin with. The simplest answer is that a decline in planned investment will be associated with a reduction in the amount of securities floated on the market and thus with the emergence of an excess demand for securities. This drives securities prices up, which is to say that the interest rate falls. At a lower rate of interest, individuals will desire larger money balances than before; in addition, the banks will tend to reduce the money stock somewhat. At that point, consequently, a gap will open between the amount of money demanded and the amount supplied.

      The analysis of the consequences of government fiscal action is somewhat more complicated. If the government tries to stimulate the economy through increased expenditures, the effects will be felt in at least two ways. First, the increased spending is an “injection” added to commodity demand and may be treated, therefore, from the Model A standpoint in the same way as an increase in private investment. Second, however, this spending may be financed through increased taxes, through government borrowing, through creation of new money, or through some combination of the three. The strongest effects are gained by following the third alternative, the creation of new money. The excess demand for goods and services created by the increase in spending will then be matched by an excess supply of money, which, as seen above, will drive down the interest rate and cause increased investment, etc. To the direct stimulus of the spending program, this method of paying for it adds the indirectly achieved stimulus of increased private investment. (Needless to say, the double effect on money income is not always desirable. The fact that this method of financing government spending has almost always been heavily resorted to in wartime accounts for the historical association of large inflations with wars.) The method of the second alternative, government borrowing (credit), consists of financing the increase in spending through the issue of government bonds. This creates an excess supply of securities, driving up the interest rate. At the higher interest rate, money demand is lessened and money supply somewhat increased, but the consequent excess supply of money will be of smaller magnitude than that entailed by creating new money. The higher interest rate will also discourage private investment. Thus the indirect effects of government borrowing are seen to involve a decrease in private investment partially offsetting the initial increase in government spending. The size of this offset has become one of the major issues between “monetarist” and “income–expenditure” economists. The monetarists argue that the offset is so nearly complete that fiscal action will be largely ineffectual unless it is accompanied by an increase in the money supply, but an increase in the money supply will have almost as powerful effects without any simultaneous fiscal action. The other side concedes that fiscal action will be more powerful when financed through changes in the money supply but maintains that countercyclical variations in government spending financed through borrowing must still be regarded as an important stabilization method.

The “natural” rate of interest and effective demand

The thought of Knut Wicksell (Wicksell, Knut)

      Around the turn of the century, the Swedish economist Knut Wicksell contributed greatly to the understanding of the function of the rate of interest in the mechanism determining income and price-level movements. Assuming an economy initially in full-employment equilibrium, Wicksell analyzed the various ways in which the system might depart from that position because of discrepancies between the prevailing market rate of interest and what he termed the “natural rate.” The latter rate, hypothetical rather than directly observable, may be thought of as the interest rate level that would have to prevail for the system to remain at full employment with stable prices. In illustrating the use made of this concept, one should distinguish between processes initiated by “real” disturbances (the first two examples below) and those initiated by “monetary” disturbances (the third example).

      The first example is one in which business firms see increased opportunities for profitable investment. The system is already at full employment, and hence an increase in spending on investment without a corresponding decrease in spending for consumption would spell inflation. What kind of adjustment will maintain stable prices? A rise in the interest rate will (1) moderate the increase in investment spending and (2) cause households to divert some of their income from consumption into increased saving. The hypothetical level of the interest rate that will exactly match the net increase in investment with the decrease in consumption (increase in saving) is the new value of Wicksell's “natural rate.” But the adjustment of the market rate may, for several reasons, come to a halt after going only part of the way to the new natural rate level. At some level of the market rate below natural rate, where planned investment still exceeds the savings that households provide for its financing, the banks may step in and finance the difference through expansion of the money supply. Thus inflation results. In Wicksell's theory there is inflationary pressure on the system associated with a market rate below the natural level and, in the version of it given here, with an increase in the money supply.

      The second example involves a change in public behaviour in that households desire to save more and consume less, out of any given level of income. The decreased demand for consumption goods threatens to cause deflation (or unemployment). To prevent this it is necessary to switch resources over to investment goods production, which requires a lowering of the interest rate. Thus an increase in saving means that the natural rate of interest declines. The adjustment of the market rate of interest may again be incomplete if falling rates induce banks, say, to reduce their new lending below scheduled loan repayments, thus reducing the money supply. Part of the saving done by households then goes, directly or indirectly, into reducing the private sector's indebtedness to banks rather than into financing investment. Thus deflationary pressure on the system is, in Wicksell's theory, associated with a market rate of interest above the natural rate and, in this example, with a decreased supply of money.

      The third example is one in which banks desire to expand their loans and, thereby, their monetary liabilities—creating a “monetary” disturbance. Since “real” incentives to save and to invest have not changed, the natural rate of interest has not changed. The increased supply of bank credit will, however, drive the market rate down. It goes below the natural rate, the money supply is increased in the process, and inflation is the result.

Keynes and Wicksell

      Keynes first took up Wicksell's idea in his Treatise on Money (1930). In Wicksell's writings, discrepancies between the natural and market rates had invariably been associated with expansion or contraction of bank credit. Keynes emphasized that such discrepancies may develop and continue without expansion or contraction of the money supply, because of speculation in the securities markets. For example, if the natural rate has decreased and the market rate starts to edge down in response to an excess of the household savings offered in demand for securities over the supply of new securities marketed to finance investment, securities prices will rise. This, Keynes suggested, will cause some speculators in “old” securities to enter the market and supply savers with securities from their holdings. The excess demand pressure on the market is thus relieved and the rise in prices (fall of the market rate) halted. The motive for these transactions is the speculators' hope that they can buy back their securities at lower prices later. In the meantime, the speculators hold their funds in the form of ready money; there has been an increase in the amount of money demanded rather than, as Wicksell assumed, a decrease in the money supply.

      The Wicksell–Keynes theory was an important contribution to the theory of the income-determination process. Yet there is nothing in its main elements that should have startled a pre-Wicksellian traditional economist. The natural rate is essentially the interest rate that would prevail in general equilibrium, and a market rate different from the natural rate is a disequilibrium interest rate. Traditional economics was clear enough as to the consequences that will follow if one or more of the prices in the system “gets stuck” at a disequilibrium level. The Wicksell–Keynes theory, therefore, may be regarded as a particular application of previously familiar principles.

      Keynes returned to the Wicksellian theme in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), but in that revolutionary work he gave the theory a genuinely novel twist: he argued that the system might be seriously out of equilibrium even though the prevailing interest rate was exactly at the Wicksellian natural level. This might happen because the interest rate mechanism cannot ensure that the plans of households and business firms with regard to future consumption and production will mesh with each other. There might, for example, be an increase in household saving—that is, a decrease in the demand for current consumption goods and an increase in the planned demand for future goods. Coordination of household and business activities requires that business firms respond by shifting resources out of the production of present consumption goods and into investment activities that lay the groundwork for increased output in the future. Households, in carrying out their saving decisions, do not place contractual orders with producers for future deliveries of particular goods and services. Thus the future demands implicit in current saving decisions may not be effectively communicated to producers, as efficient coordination would require. If producers draw up their investment plans on the basis of forecasts of future demand that do not correspond to the spending that households are prepared to undertake in the future, there will be an excess demand (or excess supply) for future output.

      Such effective demand failure is not the result of changes in interest rates or in the supply of money. The logical way of dealing with it—when it occurs—is through fiscal policy measures. The effective demand doctrine is the signal contribution of Keynesian economics to income and employment theory. It is thus no coincidence that Keynesian economics has become associated with an emphasis on the use of fiscal (fiscal policy), rather than monetary, stabilization policies.

Ed.

Additional Reading

Good introductions to the study of business cycles include Erik Lundberg (ed.), The Business Cycle in the Post-War World (1955, reprinted 1986); R.C.O. Matthews, The Business Cycle (1959, reissued 1967); Robert Aaron Gordon, Business Fluctuations, 2nd ed. (1961); Alvin Harvey Hansen, Business Cycles and National Income, expanded ed. (1964); and Henri Guitton, Fluctuations et croissance économiques, 3rd ed. (1970). Famous surveys of business cycle theories are Joseph A. Schumpeter, Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, 2 vol. (1939, reprinted 1982); and Gottfried Haberler, Prosperity and Depression, 5th ed. (1964). J. Tinbergen, Statistical Testing of Business-Cycle Theories, 2 vol. (1939, reissued 2 vol. in 1, 1968), attempts to verify by econometric analysis the theories surveyed in Haberler's work. The nontheoretical approach to business-cycle research is set forth in Arthur F. Burns and Wesley C. Mitchell, Measuring Business Cycles (1946); and further developed in Geoffrey Hoyt Moore, Business Cycle Indicators, 2 vol. (1961). Important articles are collected in American Economic Association, Readings in Business Cycle Theory (1944, reprinted 1980), and Readings in Business Cycles (1965). History and politics are dealt with in Vivian Walsh and Harvey Gram, Classical and Neoclassical Theories of General Equilibrium: Historical Origins and Mathematical Structure (1980); Dennis C. Mueller, Public Choice II (1989), which provides equilibrium-model-based analyses of the intersection between politics and economics; and James E. Alt and Kenneth A. Shepsle (eds.), Perspectives on Positive Political Economy (1990).The basic principles of the modern theory of income analysis, often called macroeconomics, may be found in any contemporary textbook of economics. Two good introductions to this subject are George T. McCandless, Jr., Macroeconomic Theory (1991), neoclassical in approach; and Joseph Stiglitz, Economics (1993), Keynesian-oriented. At the intermediate level, the two competing alternatives for reaching a sound understanding of national income theory are Robert J. Barro and Vittorio Grilli, European Macroeconomics (1994), which applies the intertemporal equilibrium approach to macroeconomic analysis; and Rudiger Dornbusch and Stanley Fischer, Macroeconomics, 6th ed. (1994), which follows an IS-LM approach. Three advanced textbooks in macroeconomic theory which exhibit the high degree of formalization that has become characteristic of the macroeconomic literature since the 1970's are Thomas J. Sargent, Macroeconomic Theory, 2nd ed. (1987), and Dynamic Macroeconomic Theory (1987); and Olivier Jean Blanchard and Stanley Fischer, Lectures on Macroeconomics (1989).More specialized or intensive treatments of macroeconomics are John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936, reissued 1991), the classic theoretical work in the field; Seymour E. Harris (ed.), The New Economics: Keynes' Influence on Theory and Public Policy (1947, reprinted 1973), a collection of early essays on Keynes and his ideas, representing the thinking of its time; and Gardner Ackley, Macroeconomic Analysis and Theory (1978), an introductory text. Later evaluations by leading economists of the significance and influence of Keynesian ideas may be found in Roy F. Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes (1951, reissued 1982), offering insight into the genesis of Keynes's ideas; H.G. Johnson, “The General Theory After Twenty-five Years,” The American Economic Review, 51:1–17 (1961), providing a retrospective survey from a “monetarist” point of view; Robert Lekachman (ed.), Keynes' General Theory: Reports of Three Decades (1964); Axel Leijonhufvud, On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes (1968), an interesting but difficult appraisal of the development of “Keynesian” ideas; and Herbert Stein, The Fiscal Revolution in America, rev. ed. (1990), examining the relationship between Keynesian thinking and governmental policies in the United States.Some important perspectives on the successes and failures of economic strategies that have resulted in fluctuations are John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose (1973), and Economics in Perspective: A Critical History (1987); and Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (1990). Two other works that offer perspectives on economic theory and its applications are Neil de Marchi and Mark Blaug (eds.), Appraising Economic Theories (1991); and Mark Blaug, The Methodology of Economics; or, How Economists Explain, 2nd ed. (1992).Henri Guitton Ed.

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