KREDIT und KAPITAL - Issue 1/1983


Contents


Articles

Kloten, Norbert
Zyklus und Politik: Zu den Ursachen der wirtschaftlichen Stagflation

Jüttner, D. Johannes
Rates of Return, Investment Behaviour and Monetary Policy

Scheele, Erwin
Vermögensrestriktion, Budgetrestriktionen, Wirkungen der Staatsverschuldung und die Budget-Multiplikatoren von Dieter Cansier

Cansier, Dieter
Einperioden-Multiplikatoren gegebener Haushaltsdefizite nach dem Blinder-Solow-Modell: Erwiderung

Pfister, Jürgen
Die neuere Ursachenkontroverse in der Inflationstheorie

Filc, Wolfgang
Internationale Wirtschaft- und Währungsprobleme: Floating, Arbeitslosigkeit und Geldpolitik

Gärtner, Manfred and Heri, Erwin W.
Konjunktur und realer Wechselkurs

Vastrup, Claus
Economic Motives for Foreign Banking: The Danish Case


Reports

Klein, Martin
Ist die Theorie effizienter Märkte empirisch widerlegt?


Book Reviews

Claassen, Emil-Maria
Grundlagen der makroökonomischen Theorie
(Michael Burchardt)

Kaminsky, Stefan
Banken für Menschen. Optimistisches Lesebuch über das Konsumentengeschäft der Banken
(Manfred Hein)

Ohr, Renate
Internationale Interdependenz nationaler Geld- und Gütermärkte bei flexiblen Wechselkursen
(Peter Lang)

Stützel, Wolfgang
Das Mark-gleich-Mark-Prinzip und unsere Wirtschaftsordnung
(Werner Steuer)


Summaries

Kloten, Norbert
„Cycle and Policy: About the Reasons of the Economic Stagnation“

The paper deals with actual problems of the market system in industrial countries with a special reference to the formation of expectations of private economic agents and their influence on overall economic activity, specifically on the propensity to invest. Two hypotheses about the formation of expectations and their empirical evidence are evaluated. Statistical facts support the view that to some extent expectations are guided by estimates of the efficiency of economic policy. Thus the defects of economic policy in the seventies offer a plausible explanation why private economic behaviour has changed and is less stabilizing than in previous periods.

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Jüttner, D. Johannes
„Rates of Return, Investment Behaviour and Monetary Policy“

This paper examines the role of Tobin's supply-price-of -capital model f or investment decisions, the problems associated with its empirical implementation and its usefulness for monetary policy purposes. The notion that lenders (financial investors) and borrowers (entrepreneurs) in the capital market compare the rate of return required by the market with the marginal efficiency of capital of new investment projects, is predicated on the view that they have access to the same set of informations pertaining to these investments in real capital. It appears that this assumption does not correctly reflect economic reality. Consequently the investment criterion can no longer be epitomized in a single variable such as Tobin's q. The attempts to empirically implement the supply price of capital or some of its components are critically appraised. The majority of the investigations fails to distinguish between the average and the marginal supply price of capital and none provides empirical observations for the latter rate of return. An examination of the link between this required rate of return and monetary policy actions reveal grave defects in this relationship. When discretionary monetary policy actions influence current output prices and inflationary expectations along with share market prices, the supply price of capital degenerates into an immovable policy indicator.

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Scheele, Erwin
“Wealth Restriction, Budget Restriction, Effects of Public Debt and D. Cansier's Budget Multipliers”

On the basis of a Blinder/Solow-type model, the first part (a) discusses the features which should be exhibited by a theoretical basis for the monetarism-Keynesianism debate, (b) outlines the problems which can be analysed meaningfully with such a model, and (c) proposes supplementations which alone make it suitable for dealing with certain issues in that debate. Special attention is given to the application of Walras's law and the problem of assessing investments as a component of output on the one hand and of the stock of capital on the other. It is shown, inter alia, that models of the type mentioned (1) must be closed, so that authors who, making reference to Walras, operate with one degree of freedom, are investigating something quite different than they believe, (2) must be extended to permit analysis of openmarket-policy, (3) give absurd results when Christ's equilibrium condition is introduced. In the second part, using an essay by Cansier as an example, it is shown what misunderstandings ensue, if the minimal requirements developed for the model in the first part are disregarded, that model being taken as a basis for examining the effects of public debt.

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Cansier, Dieter
“Single-period Multipliers of Given Budget Deficits in Accordance with the Blinder-Solow Model: Reply”

Scheele's sharp criticism of us doesn't hold water. Scheele completely misinterprets our statements. That is surprising and could easily have been avoided. In order to make the recent stock-flow analysis of fiscal policy more comprehensible to a large readership, we take the opportunity of presenting the basic ideas of this approach in a little more detail.

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Pfister, Jürgen
“The Recent Controversy on Causes in Inflation Theory”

Starting out from the traditional cost-push-versus-demand-pull debate, this study attemps above all to develop a new interpretation of the most recent controversy on causes in inflation theory. The strict separation of an economic (expansion of money supply) and a political (causes of money supply expansion) causal level eliminates the antithesis between the monetaristic and the sociological theory of inflation. The four positions in the recent causation controversy - hard-line monetarism, hard-line cost-push, ideological monetarism and eclectic view - are presented on the basis of typical examples and their explanatory value is examined. A comparison of the first (hard-line monetarism) with the fourth (eclectic view) position in the recent debate on the causes of inflation reveals an increasing degree of enlightment. The inadmissible confrontation of a sociological inflation theory with a "purely" economic theory, the incorrect presentation of the theories as alternative explanatory approaches and the lacking separation of causal levels in hard-line monetarism contrast with the exact separation of levels and the recognition of the complementariness and mutual independence of economic and political or sociological theories in the eclectic view. The standpoint represented here by Gordon appears to be a promising point of departure for the development of a political economy of inflation.

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Filc, Wolfgang
„International Economic and Monetary Problems: Floating, Unemployment and Monetary Policy“

Milton Friedman attributes the rapid increase in unemployment since the early nineteen-seventies to the greater role played by monetary policy with a discretionary orientation. Monetary policy, he claims, has become an element of uncertainty and fluctuations of price increase rates triggered by monetary policy make it more difficult to distinguish between relative and absolute price changes. Unexpected and rapidly alternating shifts in relative prices, however, result - seen from this standpoint in a decline in investments, and they push up the unemployment figures. The same occurs when shifts in relative prices between countries are dominated by fluctuations of real exchange rates. Then it is chiefly rate fluctuations on the foreign exchange markets which determine the relative prices of goods and services and the relative returns on assets expressed in terms of various currencies. The market and mostly unpredictable fluctuations of the dollar exchange rates from 1973 onwards encourage trade protectionism; they may influence production and demand decisions in favour of closer orientation to the home country; and they often induce orientation of stabilization measures in economic policy to foreign trade developments instead of domestic economic necessities. Hence the rise in trade-cycle-dependent unemployment in the nineteen-seventies may possible be attributable to the marked and unexpected fluctuations of real exchange rates. On the other hand, decontrol of the dollar exchange rate did not bring autonomy of monetary policy. True, the central banks have gained more leeway in determining the supply of central bank money. But for the Federal Republic of Germany it has proved that since then firms have sought financing in foreign countries to an increasing extent. The expansion of the leeway of the central banks on the supply side is thus offset to an increasing degree by substitution processes on the demand side.

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Gärtner, Manfred and Heri, Erwin W.
“The Trade Cycle and Real Exchange Rates - A Causality Analysis for Nine OECD Countries”

This study examines the argument often advanced especially in the economic policy debate that fluctuations of the real exchange rates are an important determinant of trade cycle trends for countries dependent on foreign trade. With a causality test based on time-series analysis, which was developed by Granger (1969), results are obtained for nine OECD countries, which hardly fit into the pattern derived with conventional theoretical argumentation. For some small, open countries, the hypothesis of causal dependence of the trade cycle on real exchange rates must be rejected. The example of Switzerland, however, shows that this unexpected result coincides with the results of available econometric studies. In the case of a large, less open country like the USA, in contrast, the statistical tests speak in favour of the existence of the investigated causal relationship. Although theoretical substantiation of this result is difficult, at least the endogeneity of cyclical trends in the USA has an unequivocal and weighty implication - the specification of empirical exchange rate models must be reappraised and their currently conventional form must be modified.

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Vastrup, Claus
“Economic Motives for Foreign Banking: The Danish Case”

In sum not one but many circumstances are necessary to explain why Danish banks set up foreign subsidiaries and branches, and in this way place a special but important part of their activities abroad. Due to fixed costs in credit rating most foreign loans to Danish borrowers are mediated not by boreign but by Danish banks. As foreign banks even with the same risk ask a higher commission and/or rate of interest on a direct loan to a Danish customer than if formally placed through the books of the Danish banks, the latter can exploit the monopolistic pricing by the former by themselves receiving the funds and placing them with their customers. Together with a growing demand for foreign funds and the official Danish regulations which prevent the Danish banks through their domestic offices to provide on a large scale foreign funds to their customers, this explains why Danish banks set up foreign subsidiaries and branches. Such a new structure for the activities of the banks will tend to reduce the cost of foreign borrowing and will thus tend to reduce the freedom of the Danish authorities to pursue an Independent monetary policy.

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Reports

Klein, Martin
„The Theory of Efficient Markets Empirically Refuted?”

This article contains critical observations on Hockmann's study on "Forecasting Share Prices by Point and Figure Analysis". The main criticism is levelled against the fact that the definition of "yield" used by Hockmann permits no consistent comparison between the buy-and-hold strategy and the point-and-figure strategies favoured by Hockmann. The reason is that the capital basis for the yields shown is completely different for the two investment forms. Consequently the cited pointand-figure yields may be artificially exaggerated by a leverage effect and permit no conclusion as to the superiority of this investment strategy. In the following section, a consistent definition of yield is derived on the basis of the Fama/ Blume method.

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