=================== HES POSTING ======================= Much of Hammond's editorial makes good sense. Taxonomies can distort our reading of the past. The terms "monetarism" and "Keynesianism" can, as I have argued elsewhere, prove too much of a straitjacket, even when considering the macroeconomics of the past 50 years, let along a much longer time span. But I think there are things missing from Hammond's editorial. First WHY DO WE USE TAXONOMIES? To make sense of what would otherwise be a chaos of details. Hammond is right here. But is there perhaps also an element of the soundbite? To get cited, you have to be associated with a clear-cut position that can be expressed succinctly. Attractive labelling, even if oversimplified, is an effective route to success in the modern academic world. We thus have an incentive to produce simple, dramatic labels - much like Hammond's taxonomies. Second, I think Hammond is critical of those (eg Blaug) he criticises, and too kind to Friedman. He gives two examples of how people classify Friedman, yet both are problematic. FRIEDMAN'S METHODOLOGY: the point about classifying him as instrumentalist, falsificationist, pragmatist,... is that this says something about the epistemological basis on which his arguments rest. If Hammond argued that Friedman fitted none of these categories, I would not dissent. But he goes on to suggest that we have a ready-made label in "Marshallian". I agree entirely that Friedman is Marshallian, but this does not, so far as I am aware, identify his epistemology - it is not in the same category as terms such as instrumentalist, pragmatist, realist... Moreover, the term "Marshallian" is perhaps sufficiently difficult to define that to use it raises as many questions as it answers. Commentators have been entirely right not simply to accept Friedman's description of himself as Marshallian, but to inquire further. (Maybe many people forgot important things about Friedman when they did this, but that is a different matter.) FRIEDMAN AS A QUANTITY THEORIST: Maybe there are difficulties with the precise details of Blaug's definition, but if we add a few qualifications, surely it gets pretty close to what most people would understand as a reasonable definition of the QT or monetarism. As regards Friedman, it is all very well citing his statements about the endogeneity of the money supply, but much of his work makes sense only if the supply of money is, to a significant extent, determined by factors that are independent of the demand for money - a statement which most people would interpret as meaning that money supply should, in many situations, be regarded as exogenous. The passage Hammond cites, and Hammond's use of it to question Blaug's definition of the QT, reminds me of Tobin's complaint about Friedman's tendency, in debate, to avoid the characteristic propositions of monetarism that are associated with his name. Notwithstanding quotes like the one Hammond uses, one could argue that much of Friedman's work makes sense only if he adopts a view something like the QT as defined by Blaug. Back to taxonomies, I would draw from these examples the conclusion that even when, as is almost always the case, taxonomies do not work precisely, they can nonetheless be useful. Blaug's definition of the quantity theory, I suggest, is a sufficiently good approximation for many purposes. We just have to be careful how we use them. This is Hammond's message, even though my emphasis is slightly different. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Roger E. Backhouse [log in to unmask] Department of Economics, University of Birmingham -------------------------------------------------------------------- ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]