Wynne Godley’s monetary circuit

Abstract

This article outlines the main points of full agreement between Wynne Godley and I. These explain why we managed to complete the task of writing our book Monetary Economics. The main points are the following: we had an identical conception of pricing procedures and the lack of impact of demand on prices relative to normal unit costs; we both had identified the compensation thesis in our previous work, that is, the belief that balance-of-payment surpluses have no impact on the stock of high-powered money in an economy set in a fixed-exchange-rate regime, in contrast to the Mundell–Fleming model; we both held very similar views about the endogeneity of the money supply and the essential role of banks versus the rest of the financial institutions; and finally, we both held a view of the monetary production economy that was in line with that presented by French circuit theorists and Augusto Graziani. This last point is developed in more detail, as it is pointed out that a number of scholars now combine the stock-flow consistent approach of Godley with the theory of the monetary circuit.