Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T18:15:35.962Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - The quantity theory of money

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2009

Get access

Summary

Mr. Herbert Spencer … advanced the doctrine that, as we trust the grocer to furnish us with pounds of tea, and the baker to send us loaves of bread, so we might trust … enterprising firms … to supply us with sovereigns and shillings at their own profit. …

Though I must always deeply respect the opinions of so profound a thinker as Mr. Spencer, I hold that in this instance he has pushed a general principle into an exceptional case, where it quite fails. … In matters of currency, self-interest acts in the opposite direction to what it does in other affairs. …

There is nothing less fit to be left to the action of competition than the provision of the currency.

William Stanley Jevons, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange

Unlike physicists and chemists, economists cannot conduct decisive experiments to find out which of two or more competing theories best explains reality. So economists don't have any simple, straightforward rules to follow when choosing among rival theories. What determines their choices? A complex and subtle process in which advocates of rival theories try to offer their colleagues persuasive reasons to accept their theories. A persuasive reason for accepting a theory could be that the theory explains some well-known facts better than other theories do or that it casts light on some previously unknown facts that were unilluminated by the rival theories.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×