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A Neowicksellian in a New Classical World: The Methodology of Michael Woodford's Interest and Prices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Kevin D. Hoover
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of California, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis, California 95616.

Extract

Michael Woodford's Interest and Prices: Foundations of a Theory of Monetary Policy (2003) is an important book. Woodford's title is, of course, a conscious revival of Wicksell's own famous work and it points to an effort to recast the analysis of monetary policy as centered on interest rates. I believe that Woodford's theoretical orientation is essentially correct. In repairing to Wicksell, he places the monetary aggregates into a more reasonable perspective, correcting the distortions of the monetarist and Keynesian diversions with respect to money. My money is, so to speak, where my mouth is: My own textbook-in-progress is also based around an IS/interest-rate rule/AS model, in which financial markets cleared by price rather than the LM curve are emphasized. Such an approach, as Woodford notes, has become standard in central banks, but has not yet captured either core undergraduate or graduate textbooks and instruction. My task here, however, was not to praise Woodford's economics nor to trace or evaluate its Wicksellian routes, but to consider Interest and Prices from a methodological point of view.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2006

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