This is too technical for Mises.org and too short for an academic journal, so I decided to upload this short criticism of monetary disequilibrium to ssrn: “Prices and the Demand for Money”.
Just posting it here if anybody is interested; I don’t really have any other way of putting it out there (no blog).
Interesting article Jonathan, I think if you try to flesh out your arguments in a bit more detail, it could make for an excellent journal article (probably for an Austrian journal). I understand however, if you don’t want to hassle yourself with that atm though.
I’ve had similar thoughts for some time actually, the price-level doctrine of monetary equilibrium espoused by the free bankers has never made much sense to me in light of a modern Austrian understanding of the operation of the structured market pricing process. With regard to the former doctrine, I found Guido Hulsmann’s comments regarding its historical origins from his Introduction to Strigl’s Capital and Production quite enlightening (see especially pp.xx-xxvii). Indeed, what’s most interesting is that Strigl’s and Hayek’s notions about the dis-equilibria that could be caused by “irregular” changes in the demand for money goes back to Wieser’s thoughts regarding whether monetary exchanges could properly mimic a “neutral” barter economy through “complementary transactions,” quite in contrast, with Mises ideas of the unavoidable monetary characteristic of prices without comparabillity to some fictional notion of a barter economy.
What is also interesting is that this also ties in somewhat with Wicksell’s thoughts on what could be a “neutral interest rate”, in terms of matching that which would appear on a barter economy. Frank Shostak gave quite a provocative and intriguing talk on this here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9CLuCUMSGY
(It was also published as a Mises daily, but I just love his accent!)
On 2nd thought, Jonathan have you considered sending this to the Cobden Centre? The subject matter seems to occupy the majority of the debates there, so I think you might have more chance of it being published there and not being labelled “too technical.”
Do they have a submission process? I see their contact form, but is there another way to contact them with the article attached?
I believe Mark Goodhand is in charge of accepting and putting up article submissions. His email is mark@cobdencentre.org (they should really put that up on the site somehwere)
Thank you; shot him an email.