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The Monetarist Controversy, or, Should we Forsake Stabilization Policies?

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Abstract

In recent years and especially since the onset of the current depression, the economics profession and the lay public have heard a great deal about the sharp conflict between “monetarists and Keynesians” or between “monetarists and fiscalists.” The difference between the two “schools” is generally held to center on whether the money supply or fiscal variables are the major determinants of aggregate economic activity, and hence the most appropriate tool of stabilization policies.

American Economic Review, Vol. 67, No. 2 (March 1977), pp. 1–17.

Presidential address delivered at the eighty-ninth meeting of the American Economic Association, Atlantic City, New Jersey September 17,1976. The list of those to whom I am indebted for contributing to shape the ideas expressed above is much too large to be included in this footnote. I do wish, however, to single out two lifetime collaborators to whom my debt is especially large, Albert Ando and Charles Holt. I also wish to express my thanks to Richard Cohn, Rudiger Dornbusch, and Benjamin Friedman for their valuable criticism of earlier drafts, and to David Modest for carrying out the simulations and other computations mentioned in the text.

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© 1995 Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Modigliani, F. (1995). The Monetarist Controversy, or, Should we Forsake Stabilization Policies?. In: Estrin, S., Marin, A. (eds) Essential Readings in Economics. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24002-9_21

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