Title: Monetary policy before and after the crisis: what should we be teaching undergraduates?

Authors: Louis-Philippe Rochon

Addresses: Department of Economics, International Economic Policy Institute, Laurentian University, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury P3E 2C6, Ontario, Canada

Abstract: The economic crisis has seen central banks turn to some rather innovative practices in order to deal with the great recession. In particular, the Federal Reserve in the USA has made considerable use of what has been called 'quantitative easing'. This practice marked a great departure from standard or textbook treatments of monetary policy, whether neoclassical or in its new consensus form. Yet, for post-Keynesian economists, quantitative easing is a practice fully consistent with the general conduct of monetary policy. The paper argues that the economics profession at large has been teaching the wrong theory of money.

Keywords: endogenous money; monetary macroeconomics; monetary policy; economic crisis; financial crisis; economics education; quantitative easing; theory of money.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPEE.2012.051142

International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 2012 Vol.3 No.3, pp.333 - 348

Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

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