Axel Leijonhufvud – författare

This book looks at very high inflations, exemplified by those suffered by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Israel, Mexico, and Peru in the eighties and by the Soviet Union today. The authors argue that a better grasp of high inflation processes is necessary in order for countries intricated in it to design stabilization strategies. The extremes of monetary instability can also give a clearer picture of the purpose that money and financial institutions serve under more normal circumstances, thus deepening our understanding of the benefits of monetary stability.The authors examine the financial problems that governments have to wrestle with in high inflation, the private sector's adaptations to high inflation conditions, and the difficulties of finding a policy strategy that can be sustained through disinflation to lasting stabilization.In describing, analysing, and explaining a number of high inflationary experiences, the authors show that standard macroeconomic theory cannot account for the phenomenon of these extreme cases and ask how received inflation theory needs to be changed in order for it to accommodate the various effects on the functioning of the economy.Finally, the authors make a series of policy prescriptions which will help policy-makers to avoid inflationary situations.

Monetary Theory and Policy Experience offers a broad context for the question of why governments prefer to limit themselves to a specific inflation target. Academic specialists and senior officials of the European Central Bank, the OECK and national central banks look beyond inflation targeting as the goal of monetary policy.

Axel Leijonhufvud has made a unique contribution to the development of macroeconomic theory. This volume draws together his insightful essays dealing with the extremes of economic instability: great depressions, high inflation and the transition from socialism to a market economy. In several of the papers, Leijonhufvud brings a neo-institutionalist perspective to the problems of coordination in economic systems.The papers within Macroeconomic Instability and Coordination some of them already considered classics, deal with the questions that dominated Leijonhufvud's interest throughout his career as an economist: what are the limits to an economy's capacity to coordinate the activities of its members? How does the behavior of the system change under extreme conditions? In what ways does its performance depend upon the institutions that govern the market process? This book presents in one volume several of Axel Leijonhufvud's most important contributions to macroeconomic theory and monetary economics. It will be invaluable to monetary and financial economists as well as to historians of economic thought.