Monetarismus und Keynesianismus in der „Neuen Geldpolitik“

Abstract

Monetarism and Keynesianism in the “New Monetary Policy”

In contrast to the widespread opinion that the “new monetary policy” introduced in the mid-seventies with the announcement and pursuance of money supply objectives must be regarded as the implementation of monetaristic conceptions, this article supports the view that in important spheres the new policy still has Keynesian traits. The author sets out to demonstrate this with an analysis of the monetary theory and monetary policy conceptions and of the technical handling of money supply control. The first part presents in condensed form the theses of monetarists and Keynesians on the theory of the value of money, and in the second part their theses on the determinants of the degree of employment, confronting them with the new monetary policy. The Keynesian conceptions of the theory of the value of money are considered to consist in the view that on the one hand the central banks assign greater significance to the announcement effect of the money supply target than to the control effect of money supply changes, and on the other hand consider the trend of important individual prices important for determination of the value of money. With respect to economic policy, the author sees Keynesian elements in the circumstance that the central banks by no means orient themselves exclusively to the trend of the value of money, but in making their decisions regard themselves as still constrained by trends in the value of money, the degree of employment and exchange rates. In the discussion of the technical implementation of money supply policy in the third part, the example chosen is the “central bank money supply” conceived by the German Bundesbank. The fact that the “central bank money supply” is an application-oriented magnitude indicates that the object of monetary policy is to take account of, and if necessary offset, reactions and modes of behaviour of the commercial banks and non-bankers. This makes it clear that the proponents of this concept - in contrast to the mone taristic conception of the tendential stability of economic activities - reckon with a certain degree of instability and consider monetary policy as a permanent, discretionary task