ホートリーの信用貨幣論

貨幣的循環と銀行

抄録

R. G. Hawtrey was an economist and officer of the Treasury and a contemporary of J. M. Keynes. He made notable contributions to various fields, and particularly to those of money and finance. He is largely a forgotten economist, though since the 1980s some studies of his theory have been undertaken by authors in various fields. The evaluations of his thought are diverse, though most authors agree that he developed a theory focused on money and credit. There are three types of studies that attribute to Hawtrey a critical tendency toward criticizing the quantity theory of money, denying the commodity theory of money, and emphasizing money as credit money. First, there are studies that evaluate his theory as one of the monetary theories of Cambridge School. Second, there are studies that stress his relation to Keynes. Third, there are studies that evaluate his theory from the viewpoint of modern theories of credit money; that is, from a Post Keynesian and Circulationist viewpoint.
However, there are at least three points that are not well argued in those studies. First, there is the theory of credit money based on Hawtrey's monetary economics. Second, although the theory of trade cycle has received attention as his macroeconomics, there is the process of monetary circulation as the basis of trade cycle theory. Third, that is to emphasize the role of bank. Formerly, although studies have emphasized the “dealer” as an original factor of Hawtrey's theory of macroeconomics, the relation between the “dealer” and the theory of credit money was not emphasized. On the contrary, in the studies that emphasize money and credit, the place of the dealer was not clear. Therefore, to integrate the two positions we focus on the bank, which is defined as the “dealer in debts.” The bank is defined in the theory of credit money, and it is important to clarify the relation between the theory of credit money and Hawtrey's macroeconomic theory. The bank as well as the dealer plays not only the role of a sector in his macroeconomics, but also because of its dominance over the dealer the bank plays a central role in macroeconomic theory.
To clarify these three points is the aim of this paper, and the conclusions are threefold. First, Hawtrey developed the theory of substance of money based on the credit money theory. His theory of substance of money could cope with the neoclassical argument that defines money as a medium of exchange and is grounded on commodity money. Second, there is the process of monetary circulation in his macroeconomic theory. This is a kind of stationary state in which the economy does not fluctuate, and a benchmark of the theory. Third, the bank plays an important role. The bank is defined in the theory of credit money, and links the theory of credit money to macroeconomic theory. The bank is defined as a kind of dealer, which is Hawtrey's original concept. His macroeconomic theory can be understood as the four sector model consisting of producer, consumer, bank, and dealer.