[발췌: 일반이론 17장] The Essential Properties of Interest and Money

출처: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Keynes, 1936)
자료: MIA(html); eBook; single PDF; Gutenberg(html) (cf. my catalog of his writings)

※ This is a reading note with excerpts taken, and personal annotations and remarks added, in trying to understand the above text, so visit the source links to see the original [일반이론 독서메모 (my reading notes of Keynes's General Theory)

※ 발췌(excerpts):

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Chapter 17_ The Essential Properties of Interest and Money

I

It seem, then, that the rate of interest on money plays a peculiar part in setting a limit to the level of employment, since it sets a standard to which the marginal efficiency of a capital-asset must attain if it is to be newly produced. That this should be so, is, at first sight, most perplexing. It is natural to enquire wherein the peculiarity of money lies as distinct from other assets, whether it is only money which has a rate of interest, and what would happen in a non-monetary economy. Until we have answered these questions the full significance of our theory will not be clear.

  The money-rate of interestㅡwe may remind the readerㅡis nothing more than the percentage excess of a sum of money contracted for forward delivery, e.g. a year hence, over what we may call the 'spot' or cash price of the sum thus contracted for forward delivery. It would seem, therefore, that for every kind of capital-asset there must be an analogue of the rate of interest on money. For there is a definite quantity of (e.g.) wheat to be delivered a year hence which has the same exchange value to-day as 100 quarters of wheat for 'spot' delivery. If the former quantity is 105 quarters, we may say that the wheat-rate of interest is 5% per annum; and if it is 95 quarters, that it is minus 5% per annum. Thus for every durable commodity we have a rate of interest in terms of itself;ㅡa wheat-rate of interest, a copper-rate of interest, a house-rate of interest, even a steel-plant-rate of interest.

  The difference between 'future' and 'spot' contracts for a commodity, such as wheat, which are quoted in the market, bears a definite relation to the wheat-rate of interest, but, since the future contract is quoted in terms of money for forward delivery and not in terms of wheat for spot delivery, it also brings in the money-rate of interest. The exact relationship is as follows:

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  So far, therefore, the money-rate of interest has no uniqueness compared with other rates of interest, but is on precisely the same footing. Wherein, then, lies the peculiarity of the money-rate of interest which gives it the predominant practical importance attributed to it in the preceding chapters? Why should the volume of output and employment be more intimately bound up with the money-rate of interest than with the wheat-rate of interest or the house-rate of interest?


II

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