Keynesian Supply Shocks and Hayekian Secondary Deflations

In response to the COVID-19 lockdown policies, Guerrieri et al. (2020) developed a new concept: the Keynesian supply shock. A Keynesian supply shock is an aggregate supply shock that leads to an even larger aggregate demand shock. This paper suggests that Keynesian supply shocks are very similar to the secondary deflations suggested by Hayek (1931), and US data from the 2007–09 financial crisis show that these concepts may help to explain employment dynamics in the midst of a crisis. This fact implies that long-standing policy advice based on Austrian business cycle theory would be useful in responding to Keynesian supply shocks.

Net Present Value, Duration, and CAPM in Light of Investment Theory: A Comment on Kruk

In her paper “Corporate Risk Evaluation in the Context of Austrian Business Cycle Theory” recently published in this journal, Joanna Kruk aims to investigate how artificially low interest rates resulting from central bank intervention distort individual investment appraisals and ultimately result in both entrepreneurial misjudgment and resource-wasting malinvestment, fueling the business cycle. She identifies entrepreneurs’ net present value calculations, supposedly unadjusted for risk, as a major issue and suggests adjusting those calculations for risk via both the duration method and the Capital Asset Pricing Model to mitigate the distorting effects. Her argumentation is, however, trapped in neoclassical reasoning and is adversely affected by several misconceptions of the net present value criterion. This comment seeks to reveal those fallacies and explain how to address uncertainty when using net present value calculations to make those calculations part of the solution rather than part of the problem of entrepreneurial misjudgment. The findings are derived from German investment theory rooted in the Austrian school of thought, meaning that they differ compared to those of neoclassical finance theory.

Reasons for the Demise of Interest: Savings Glut and Secular Stagnation or Central Bank Policy?

This article compares the Keynesian, neoclassical and Austrian expla-nations for low interest rates and sluggish growth. From a Keynesian and neoclassical perspective, low interest rates are attributed to aging societies, which save more for the future (global savings glut). Low growth is linked to slowing population growth and a declining marginal efficiency of investment as well as to declining fixed capital investment due to digitalization (secular stagnation). In contrast, from the perspective of Austrian business cycle theory, interest rates were decreased step by step by central banks to stimulate growth. This paralyzed investment and lowered growth in the long term. This study shows that the ability of banks to extend credit ex nihilo and the requirement of time to produce capital goods invalidates the permanent IS identity assumed in the Keynesian theory. Furthermore, it is found that there is no empirical evidence for the hypotheses of a global savings glut and secular stagnation. Instead, low growth can be explained by the emergence of quasi “soft budget constraints” as a result of low interest rates, which reduce the incentive for banks and enterprises to strive for efficiency.

The Mises-Hayek business cycle theory

The Paper is an Overview of Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) phenomena it is intended to explain, economy wide crisis especially concentrated on the banking sector. A short examination of similarities and differences between Mises and Hayek, the main developers of ABCT, is then given. Finally, some policy recommendations are examined in the light of ABCT. Key words: Financial Crisis, Business Cycle, Inflation, Saving. JEL Classification: B53, E42, E44, E61, G01, G21, P10, P20. Resumen: El artículo es una visión general de la Teoría Austriaca del Ciclo Económico (TACE) basada en un primer contacto con la literatura. La TACE se presenta en términos de los fenómenos que intenta explicar: crisis eco-nómicas, concentradas en el sector bancario. Después se expone una breve investigación de las semejanzas y diferencias entre Mises y Hayek, los prin - cipales contribuyentes a la TACE. El trabajo concluye con unas recomenda-ciones de política económica que se analizan a la luz de la TACE. Palabras clave: Crisis Financiera, Ciclo Económico, Inflación, Ahorro. Clasificación JEL: B53, E42, E44, E61, G01, G21, P10, P20.

A brief note on economic recessions, banking reform and the future of capitalism

In my book «Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles» (1st Spanish Edition 1992, 2nd English Edition 2009) I present a detailed analysis of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory. Now I will concentrate on the financial crisis and the current worldwide economic recession as one of the most challenging problems we must now cope with and the way in which the Austrian Business Cycle Theory can help us to understand its causes and the best approach to economic recovery. Having witnessed the intellectual and practical defeat of socialism specially during the last decades of the twentieth century, in my opinion one of the main challenges that still remains for the future of Capitalism is the urgent need to privatize money by dismantling the organ of central monetary planning: the Central Bank. In other words, real Socialism, represented by state money, Central banks and financial administrative regulations, is still in force in the monetary and credit sectors of the so called free market economies. As a result of this fact we experience regularly in the area of money and credit all the negative consequences established by the Theorem of the Impossibility of Socialism discovered by those distinguished members of the Austrian School of Economics Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Specifically, the central planners of state money are unable to know, to follow and to control the changes in both the demand and supply of money. Furthermore, the whole financial system is based on the legal privilege given by the state to private bankers to act with a fractional reserve ratio in relation with the demand deposits they receive from their clients. As a result of this privilege, private bankers are not true financial intermediaries, but are mainly creators of deposits materializing in credit expansions. These credit expansions are artificial and do not correspond to any previous increases in the voluntary savings of the citizens. In this way the current fractional reserve banking system, tends to worsen and amplify the systemic intertemporal distortions and investment misallocations that the macroeconomic planners working for central banks induce in the production structure of the whole real economy. These distortions manifest themselves in the stages of financial bubbles, economic boom, overall malinvestment and afterwards in the stages of financial crisis, deep economic recession and unemployment.

Time preference and investment expenditure

This paper offers a critique of the Austrian theory according to which social time preference determines the proportion between aggregate consumption and aggregate saving, and therefore also the volume of total investment expenditure. We argue that there is no such necessary relationship between the (pure) interest rate and the volume of aggregate investment. Then we discuss the implications of our thesis for growth theory and business-cycle theory, stressing in particular the need to distinguish between two types of growth and two corresponding types of inter-temporal misallocation. Key words: Time Preference, Time Market, Investment Expenditure, Growth Types, Inter-Temporal Mis-allocation, Austrian Business-Cycle Theory, Austrian Macroeconomics. JEL classification: B53, D01, D40, D92, E22, E32, E43. The purpose of this paper is to offer a critique of the theory according to which social time preference determines the proportion between aggregate consumption and aggregate saving, and therefore also the volume of total investment expenditure. This theory is held by virtually all Austrian economists past and present. We will first present it based on Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State, where it is stated in the clearest and most detailed form. Then we will examine its shortcomings and discuss some implications of our findings.

Austrian business cycle theory: are 100 percent reserves sufficient to prevent a business cycle?

Economists in the tradition of the Austrian school have shown that one type of maturity mismatching can cause maladjustments and business cycles.1 When banks expand credit, by granting loans and creating demand deposits, they generate immediately withdrawable liabilities to finance longer-term loans. The newly created demand deposits do not represent a reduction of consumption, i.e., that characterized by real savings. As a con sequence, in terest rates are artificially reduced under the level they would have been in a free market reflecting real savings and time preference rates.2 Thus, entrepreneurs are prone to engage in more and longer projects than could be financed with the available supply of real savings. Before all projects that are financed by the credit expansion are finished, a bust occurs. An absence of realsavings to sustain the factors of production in the production pro cesses and to produce complementary and necessary capital goods becomes evident. As a result, malinvestments are liquidated and the structure of production is brought in line with consumer preferences again. This is the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) in a nutshell. As a remedy Austrian economists such as Selgin (1988) and White (1999) have argued that a free banking system would be a means to inhibit the excessive credit expansion that causes business cycles. They maintain that the competition between banks would limit the credit expansion of the banking system effectively. Other Austrians such as Rothbard (1991) and Huerta de Soto (2006) have gone further and advocate a 100 percent re - rerve banking system ruling out credit expansion altogether.3 In this article it is argued that a 100 percent reserve system can still bring about artificial booms by maturity mismatching if there is a central bank or government support and guarantees for the ban king system. Even if we accept the case for a 100 percent re - serve requirement, we see that the maturity mismatching of liabilities and assets (borrowing short and lending long) is itself perilous–and in the same sense that fractional reserves are perilous.

Asset prices - An Austrian Perspective

How asset prices should be taken into account in monetary policy is a controversial question in mainstream discussion. These mainstream positions can be differentiated into two broad perspectives: the proactive and the reactive views. The proactive view advocates pricking the asset price bubble, while the reactive view argues against monetary policy targeting asset prices. In this article the relation between asset prices and the Austrian business cycle theory is examined. Following this, a critique of both the proactive and reactive views is provided and implications for monetary policy are deduced. Key words: Austrian Economics, Business Cycles, Asset Prices, Central Banks and their Policies. JEL Classification: B53, E32, E58.

On Hayekian Triangles

The triangle is an integral part of the history of economic thought. It has been used by writers such as Jevons (1871), Taussig (1896), Wicksell (1934, 1969) to illustrate and to help us understand capital theory. Since Hayek (1931) this geometrical figure has been used as a basic pedagogical device to explain the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT). The purpose of the present paper is to argue that the triangle is highly problematic, if not fatally flawed, and that if ABCT is to be made intelligible this tool of analysis must be either completely jettisoned, or heavily supplemented with a list (see below) of its shortcomings. Moreover in some ways the triangle has been responsible for the relative lack of development of ABCT for over a half century. Key words: Austrian economics, business cycle theory, praxeology, economic geometry, triangles. Clasificación JEL: E3, E32. Resumen: El triángulo es una parte integral de la historia del pensamiento económico. Ha sido utilizado por escritores como Jevons (1871), Taussig (1896), Wicksell (1934, 1969) para ilustrar y ayudarnos a comprender la teoría del capital. Desde Hayek (1931) esta figura geométrica se ha utilizado como un instrumento pedagógico básico para explicar la teoría austriaca del ciclo económico. El propósito de este trabajo es sostener que el triángulo es altamente problemático, sino fatalmente defectuoso, por lo que si deseamos que la teoría austriaca del ciclo económico sea comprendida debemos desecharlo comple-tamente, o complementarlo fuertemente con una lista de sus limitaciones. Además, en algunos casos el triángulo ha sido responsable de la relativa falta de desarrollo de la teoría austriaca del ciclo durante un periodo de medio siglo. Palabras clave: Economía austriaca, teoría del ciclo económico, praxeología, geometría económica, triángulos.

New paths in Austrian Macroeconomics

This paper makes four points. First, interest rates are not prices; rather they are metrics. Second, there are no markets for «loanable funds» in reality, so attempts to use «the» market for loanable funds either to explain saving-induced growth (or growth induced in other ways) are misleading. Rather, the appropriate concept is markets for financial assets. Third, the primary and most important source of growth is not households’ low or reduced time preferences, but entrepreneurs high or increased profit expectations. Fourth, financial institutions may respond, in part, to a rise in the monetary base by accepting a higher default risk of their assets; i.e., by making riskier loans and buying riskier (financial) assets, in order to maintain nominal interest rates and net interest margins. Key words: Risk, Loanable funds, Financial assets, Austrian business cycle theory. JEL Classification: E32. Resumen: Este artículo desarrolla una versión modificada de la teoría austriaca del ciclo económico en la que el papel protagonista lo juegan las expectativas de beneficio de los empresarios (más que la reducción de la preferencia temporal de los agentes económicos) y la asunción de proyectos empresariales más arriesgado, como principal detonante de las malas inversiones. Palabras clave: Riesgo, Fondos prestables, Activos financieros, Teoría austriaca del ciclo económico. Clasificación JEL: E32.