출처: D.E. Moggridge, Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography
자료: 구글도서
※ 발췌(excerpts):
p. 498
( ... ) Before the first meeting, Keynes circulated various EAC memoranda, including some of the replies to the Prime Minister's questions; Pigou's heads of evidence to the Macmillan Committee;[t] a series of draft heads for discussion prepared by Richard Kahn; a note by Robbins on 'Possible Topics for Discussion' which he had sent Keynes on 31 August; and a 'semi-protectionist' letter written by Keynes to the ^Manchester Guardian^ on 14 August.[69] At this meeting, as well as asking for more papersㅡthe Macmillan Committee evidence of Sir Josiah Stamp, Dennis Robertson, and Professor A.L. Bowleyㅡthe members of the committee agreed to defer a decision on Robbins's suggestion that they hear evidence from American and Continental economists on the causes of the slump and the British position ( ... p. 499 unavailable ...)
p. 500-502
Keynes had always been sceptical about arguments wrapped up in principes: one recalls his campaign against the return to gold, when they had been called 'hard facts', or the 'Treasury view'. [72] However, these 1930 remarks on 'principle' related to one case where his increased eclecticism showed up most stronglyㅡprotection. In his Macmillan 'evidence' he had raised the issue and had raised general arguments against free trade, but he had not reached a firm conclusion. By July 1930, he had 'become reluctantly convinced that some protectionist measures should be introduced'. By the time of his Committee of Economists, he could go even further and question the basic advantage of a high degree of specialisation in the manufacturing sector amongst countries.[73]
In setting down his replies to his own questions, Keynes re-cast his ‘special case’ of the Treatise in a strikingly effective wayㅡone more effective than his previous schematic presentation for the Macmillan Committee which he had also used in his letter to the Governor of the Bank. He centred his analysis on two equilibriaㅡ[:]
- 'equilibrium' real wage or those paid when all factors of production are fully employed and entrepreneus are enjoying the Marshallian 'normal profits' necessary for them to persist in the same activities on the same scale,
- and 'equilibrium' terms of trade or the terms of trade that ensue when the level of domestic money wage relative to those abroad is such that the amount of foreign investment plus home investment equal the amount of saving at the world interest rate. [74]
- He argued that Britain's current problems mainly resulted from a deterioration in the equilibrium terms of trade uncompensated by an equivalent decline in money wages, for he could find no evidence that up to 1929 real wages had grown faster than output per head or that British industrial technology had suddenly deficient.
- The effect of this analytical contrivance was advantageous: it centred on the important elements of the problem; whereas, for example, a concentration on real wage levels seemed to begin the analysis at the wrong end for policy purposes.
- He then examined the main determinants of change in the equilibrium terms of trade: those affecting the current account of the balance of payments (foreign tariffs, declines in important foreign markets, changes in the exchange rate, and changes in relative efficiencies) and those affecting the incentives to lend overseas and hence the capital account (changes in borrowers' demands at home and abroad, and changes in supply conditions for home and foreign lending).
[74] [※ this reader's note] It is extremely inconvenient to verifying the source marked in the footnote. But this source must be this one (Memorandam by Keynes in September 1930) . The author discuss no more about this memo by Keynes except the part of the memo discussing the Kahn's multiplier, which follows just below in two paragraphs.
Organising his analysis in this way, Keynes then turned to a side issue, which he had not yet integrated into his story: Richard Kahn's preliminary investigations into the employment multiplier that he would soon present to the committee in outline from during the weekend at Shortlands. Kahn's 'multiplier' put a limit on the repercussions of a rise in home investment resulting from an increase in public works expenditures. The trick was to look at the repercussions in terms of the possible leakages from each round of expenditure that did not immediately return to the stream of incomes (taxes, savings, imports) and thus be able to estimate a ^finite^ geometric series. He could thus, if he knew the size of the various leakages, estimate the relationship between initial expenditure and the final result, or the multiplier. At this stage, Keynes had picked up the estimate, which he took as 2, but he did not see the ultimately destructive implications of the concept for the pure theory of the ^Treatise^. [75]
Having raised this side issue, which produced some controversy during the committee's proceedings but did not find its way into their report, Keynes returned to his questionnaire to put rough and ready estimate on the relevant items. He estimated abnormal unemployment at 1,500,000,
- of which 1/9 was a result of real wages running ahead of productivity by 2.5%, 1/3 was a result of the slump, 5/9 the result of the deterioration in the equilibrium terms of trade.
- To solve the problem by reducing money wages would require reductions of the order of 40%ㅡit is hardly surprising that Keynes put so much emphasis on 'other expedients' to shift the equilibrium terms of trade in Britain's favour.
Other members of the committee took differing view on both sections of the questionnaire. The view most markedly opposed to Keynes's was that of Robbins. Deeply influenced by Hayek's and von Mises's development of Wicksell's ideas, he approached the problem in a dramatically different manner, although the terminology looked similar to Keynes's, given the common Wicksellian inheritance. For Robbins, the slump and its problems were the result of overinvestment in fixed capital during the previous boom which had resulted from the money rate of interest being below the natural rate. Viable remedies for the slump would have to take account of the peculiarities of that boom and the need to write off mistaken investments and to bring prices back towards more realistic, equilibrium levels. In such an analysis, any reduction in the rate of interest or increase in investment outside normal channels would merely exacerbate the difficulties caused by the initial overinvestment which had led to the collapse of the previous boom. What was required were measures that would decrease rigidities in the economic system and allow the necessary adjustments. Thus, whereas Keynes took the rigidities of money wages as almost a given and tried to adapt policy to this fact of economic life, Robbins took it as a source of so many of Britain's economic problems that the report should highlight this rigidity and the roles of unemployment insurance, monopolies and restrictive practices in creating it. With his emphasis on rigidities and his life-long, philosophical aversion to quantitative economics, [76] Robbins was unwilling to play the game of estimating aggregate figures for wages and productivity, especially as he believed the existing average figures reflected a less than optimal distribution.
The other members of the group were in varying degrees more prepared than Robbins to play the game according to Keynes's proposed rules. They were also more concerned to achieve some consensus and to minimise their theoretical differencesㅡpartly because of their longer experience in advisory committees and perhaps partly because some of them notably Stamp and Henderson, did not have well-defined, clearly thought out theoretical positions. Pigou did have such a position, which as a result of long work in the field stretching from ^Wealth and Welfare^(1912) to ^Industrial Fluctuations^(1927 and 1929), had developed from the microeconomic theoretical relationships that saw the quantity of employment as a function of real wages and of the productivity of labour. From such a starting pointㅡthe reverse of Keynes's where real wages came in towards the end of the storyㅡPigou addressed himself primarily not to cyclical matters but to the longer-term question of the origins of the post-war increase in average unemployment in Britain over its pre-war level. ( ... ... )
( ... p. 503 unavailable ... )
p. 504
( ... ) After almost 18 hours of discussion at Stamp's house, the committee adjourned until 7 October to giver the chairman time to draft a report embodying the sense of their discussions. Keynes's draft [83] put as the major cause of Britain's (and other countries') current difficulties the recent collapse in world prices following on from their slightly declining trend between 1924 and 1929. In Britain' case, the difficulties were exacerbated by her return to gold at pre-war par, her levels of taxation, her restrictive practices and barriers to labour mobility, which meant that she had 'no margin in hand to provide against a long process of falling prices unaccompanied by falling home wages'. Nor could he rule out the prospect of further price falls. The draft considered possible remedies, all of which required raising business returns to a more normal level. He classified them under four heads: those which increased businessmen's ability to pay existing money wages without a rise in the price level; those which raised the domestic price level relative to money wages; those which, although they might result in some rise in domestic prices, produced their main employment-creating effects through other means; and those which reduced money wage. He expressed a preference for any of the first three classes of remedy over the fourth. However, as he did not expect much relief from the first (the easing of restrictive practices, increased labour mobilityㅡincluding that which might come from a reform of unemployment insuranceㅡand increased technical efficiency), or from the second(a rise in the world price level),[w] most of his emphasis fell on the third class. These Britain could adopt on her own. They ranged from measures to raise business confidence through the ^Treatise^ menu of means of raising domestic investment at the existing internationally-determined rate of interest to an increase in foreign investment as a result of protection or his own tariff-bounty scheme.
( ... pp. 505-506 unavailable ... )
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