Geldnachfrage und die Zeitstruktur von Produktion
The Demand for Money and the Time-Structure of Production
The classical economists rejected the notion that the supply of and demand for money had any systematic impact on aggregate wealth. According to Adam Smith, the true factors determining economic growth were the division of labor and capital accumulation — real, not monetary factors. Austrian economists have always cherished and held on to these central insights, yet they have nuanced them in several respects. Most notably, Menger and Böhm-Bawerk have introduced the time dimension into the theory of capital, showing among other things the classical wage fund theory to be inaccurate in important respects. Similarly, Mises stressed that money is not neutral. While the supply of money and the demand for money have no systematic impact on aggregate growth, these forces do affect the distribution and allocation of resources. They shape the type and relative quantities of goods being produced. In short, they determine the structure, though not the level of production.
The purpose of present paper is to analyze the impact of the demand for money on the pure rate of interest, and thus on the time structure of production. Conventional Austrian monetary theory holds that while the supply of money does have a systematic impact on the rate of interest, the demand for money does not. The latter is, so to say, "time-neutral." We will criticize this contention and proceed as follows: After a reminder of some basic concepts (section II), we will briefly restate the traditional Austrian analysis of the time dimension of the money relation (section III), and then offer a critique, stressing that the demand for money is not time neutral in the case of natural money, whereas it is in the case of fiat money (section IV). Finally we shall discuss some implications of our findings (section V).
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