Karl Friedrich Maier (1905 – 1993) Theoretiker des allgemeinen Gleichgewichts und der Mikro-Ökonomie / Karl Friedrich Maier (1905-1993). A Master of General Equilibrium and Micro-Economic Analysis

In the early thirties of the last century Karl Friedrich Maier was, like his contemporary Friedrich A. Lutz, a student of Walter Eucken and later on his friend. Besides managing his own firm he was one of the founders and promoters of the Walter Eucken Institute at Freiburg (Germany) and for many years in charge of its research program. After the Second World War he started a teaching career at the University of Freiburg. K. F. Maier was a master of micro-economic theory. The subject of his habilitation thesis was the explication of the mighty flow of gold into France in the years 1928 - 1930. Not being satisfied with the existing tools of economic theory he developed a micro-economic theory of money. He conceived gold flows between countries as flows of money. Their origin he located in an excess demand for or an excess supply of cash balances by individual households and firms in a particular country. As early as 1935 he had got hold of the essential elements of what in the sixties and seventies was developed mainly by H. G. Johnson and R. A. Mundell as the monetary approach to the balance of payments. K. F. Maier later refined considerably the theory of the demand for money by individual households and firms. Besides monetary theory he tackled interest theory and the explanation of business cycles. In all these fields he trod new paths. His aim was to integrate monetary and interest theory and the explanation of business cycles into the theory of general equilibrium. He also made some lucid contributions to the problem of stabilizing the economic process and to the theory of economic order (Ordnungstheorie) in the spirit of the Freiburg school.