Drawing on years of research, Gerald Steele delves into the diverse ideas of Henry Simons, a neglected economist whose work in the 1930s on monetary and financial instability is extremely relevant to today’s debates about commercial bank credit, the interdependence of fiscal and monetary policy, and financial regulation.

Steele describes the emergence of the first Chicago school of economics and its distinctive difference to the School subsequently associated with the Monetarism of Milton Friedman, and shows how Simons provides the basis for what is now referred to as ‘the fiscal theory of the price level’ and how this differs from the monetarist attempt to control prices by controlling the supply of broad money.

This book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of the history of economic thought, economic history, macroeconomics and banking and finance.

G.R. Steele is Reader in Economics at Lancaster University. His research interests include the economics and political philosophy of Friedrich Hayek, and he has pursued a general inquiry into the development of ideas relating to problems of a money economy.

In 2007, he delivered the F. A. Hayek Memorial Lecture, Austrian Scholars Conference, Mises Institute. In 2010 he was Visiting Professor at the University of Economics, Prague, when he delivered the František Čuhel Memorial Lecture, Conference on Political Economy, at the Cevro Institute.