Last fall and early winter I posted a series of four blogposts (here, here, here, and here) about or related to Ralph Hawtrey as I was trying to gather my thoughts about an essay I wanted to write about Hawtrey as a largely forgotten pioneer of macroeconomics who has received the attention of two recent books by Robert Hetzel and Clara Mattei. After working on and off on the essay in the winter and spring, receiving helpful comments and advice from friends and colleagues, I posted a draft on SSRN.
Here is the abstract:
I conclude the paper as follows:
Hawtrey’s discussion of the fear of inflation refutes the key contentions about Hawtrey made by Hetzel and by Mattei: first, that Hawtrey believed that monetary policy was powerless to increase aggregate demand and stimulate a recovery from the Great Depression (Hetzel), and second that Hawtrey was instrumental in designing a Treasury policy agenda of austerity using deflation and unemployment to crush the aspirations of the British working class for radical change, providing a model emulated by fascists and authoritarians upon coming to power (Mattei).
A slight, non-substantive, revisions of the essay is now being reviewed by SSRN before replacing the current version now available. After some further revisions, the essay will appear later this year as an article in Economic Affairs.