Some years ago I published a paper on the banking theory and policy views of the important twentieth-century economist Friedrich A. Hayek, entitled “Why Didn't Hayek Favor Laissez Faire in Banking?”[1] Very recently, working on a new paper on Hayek’s changing views of the gold standard, I…
In its "Free Exchange" column, the Economist recently took up the issue of monetary rules. Provocatively titled “Rule It Out,” the column announced that “setting interest rates according to a fixed formula is a bad idea.” Reading the column one quickly learns the author doesn’t understand what…
In his ground-breaking work, Denationalisation of Money: the Argument Refined, F.A. Hayek proposed that open competition among private suppliers of irredeemable monies would favor the survival of those monies that earned a reputation for possessing a relatively stable purchasing power. One of the main problems with Bitcoin…
I reckon myself a fan of the classical (pre-WWI) gold standard, considering it to have been the best monetary arrangement ever, and a far better one than the various supposedly scientific alternatives seen since. I also bristle at misinformed criticisms of that standard, including the very popular…