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Date: | Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:41:03 -0500 |
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As to Hayek's paper on "restoring the price level". I don't think
there was any need to commission an article on that topic, as it was
a matter of general debate at the time. For instance, the subtitle of
Keynes's The Means To Prosperity (March 1933, in The times) was
"Raising The Price Level, The Ottawa Decision". Harrod was also
engaged in that discussion (see
http://economia.unipv.it/harrod/edition, both in the correspondence
and in the 'press item' sections). The point was that in order to
stimulate recovery it was essential to bring the price level back to
the 1929 level (the term 'reflation' was coined at about that time).
It was also a topic discussed at the World economic conference in July 1933.
Without knowing the exact circumstances of the writing of Hayek's
piece, it is not hard to imagine that he could have wanted to express
disagreement on that view --although I'd more easily place Hayek's
piece in the first half of 1933, or late 1932, when the debate was
more lively, with economists subscribing collective letters on the
topic (Are you sure that the pencilled note was contemporary with the
paper? if the result of a posterior dating attempt, it could be wrong).
Daniele Besomi
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