Monetary Economics after Wicksell: Alternative Perspectives within the Theory of the Monetary Circuit

Augusto Graziani’s main theoretical contribution has been the development of the theory of the monetary circuit. This contemporary approach has its roots in the monetary heterodoxy of the end of the nineteenth century and the first thirty years of the twentieth century. Graziani’s theoretical enterprise has never divorced positive contributions to economic thought from an appraisal of past theories and authors. His position is highly original. Usually, two conflicting visions are held. The first move backwards from modern theories to older antecedents, on the assumption that the former are a progress relative to the latter because either they have overcome prior errors or encapsulated the partial truth sedimented by past developments. It is a continuist view. The second is a discontinuist view, stressing paradigm shifts, advancing no pretence that formal refinements mean that the older views are wrong or outdated. The door is then open to conflict among different viewpoints in contemporary theorising.