Abstract

Is the Rational Expectations Theory the End of Trade Cycle Policy?

Contrary to widely announced views of politicians, and despite of the theory of rational expectations (not rational forming of expectations) this survey argues, that fiscal and monetary policies are powerful tools for stabilization-purposes. Of course, those times of a fine-tuning based on a fix-price IS-LM-framework (or other oversimplified models, velocity-concepts, etc.) preached by hydraulic-economists of all paradigms are gone – in economic-theory. But still we need departures away from atemporal (mainly neoclassical or walrasian) models as well as more insights into the structure of existing economic systems beyond Say; systems which are in general open to an uncertain future with regime-changes, structural shocks, etc. Examplified through the development within the “new classical macroeconomics” or the “new monetary economics”, the message to keynesian mechanics is an old one: “The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of use have been, into every corner of our minds” (J. M. Keynes, 1936, Preface, p. xxiii).