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Stabilizing the dollar
Excerpt from Stabilizing the Dollar: A Plan to Stabilize the General Price Level, Without Fixing Individual Prices
The fundamental fact on which the proposal of this book is based is that the purchasing power of the dollar is uncertain and variable, that is, that the price level is unstable.
The war has caused the greatest upheaval of prices the world has ever seen. Inseparably connected with this upheaval is grave and world-wide industrial discontent. Because of this and because of the perplexity of business men as to future movement of prices, there has been much discussion going on of the question whether the level of war prices will drop or whether it can be stabilized.
To show that permanent stability can be secured is the chief aim of this book; and a specific and detailed plan for this purpose is presented.
The first sketch of this plan was published in 1911 (in my Purchasing Power of Money). It was later presented before the International Congress of Chambers of Commerce at Boston, September, 1912, and again before the American Economic Association, December, 1912. The plan was elaborated in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, February, 1913.
In October, 1917, I gave the Hitchcock lectures at the University of California, using much of the material published now, for the first time, in this book.
The fundamental fact on which the proposal of this book is based is that the purchasing power of the dollar is uncertain and variable, that is, that the price level is unstable.
The war has caused the greatest upheaval of prices the world has ever seen. Inseparably connected with this upheaval is grave and world-wide industrial discontent. Because of this and because of the perplexity of business men as to future movement of prices, there has been much discussion going on of the question whether the level of war prices will drop or whether it can be stabilized.
To show that permanent stability can be secured is the chief aim of this book; and a specific and detailed plan for this purpose is presented.
The first sketch of this plan was published in 1911 (in my Purchasing Power of Money). It was later presented before the International Congress of Chambers of Commerce at Boston, September, 1912, and again before the American Economic Association, December, 1912. The plan was elaborated in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, February, 1913.
In October, 1917, I gave the Hitchcock lectures at the University of California, using much of the material published now, for the first time, in this book.
314 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1924
16 people want to read
About the author
Irving Fisher
313 books57 followersIrving Fisher was an American economist, inventor, and social campaigner. He was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt deflation has been embraced by the Post-Keynesian school.
Fisher made important contributions to utility theory and general equilibrium. He was also a pioneer in the rigurous study of intertemporal choice in markets, which led him to develop a theory of capital and interest rates.[4] His research on the quantity theory of money inaugurated the school of macroeconomic thought known as "monetarism." Both James Tobin and Milton Friedman called Fisher "the greatest economist the United States has ever produced."
Fisher was perhaps the first celebrity economist, but his reputation during his lifetime was irreparably harmed by his public statements, just prior to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, claiming that the stock market had reached "a permanently high plateau." His subsequent theory of debt deflation as an explanation of the Great Depression was largely ignored in favor of the work of John Maynard Keynes. His reputation has since recovered in neoclassical economics, particularly after his work was revived in the late 1950s and more widely due to an increased interest in debt deflation in the Late-2000s recession. Some concepts named after Fisher include the Fisher equation, the Fisher hypothesis, the international Fisher effect, and the Fisher separation theorem.
Fisher made important contributions to utility theory and general equilibrium. He was also a pioneer in the rigurous study of intertemporal choice in markets, which led him to develop a theory of capital and interest rates.[4] His research on the quantity theory of money inaugurated the school of macroeconomic thought known as "monetarism." Both James Tobin and Milton Friedman called Fisher "the greatest economist the United States has ever produced."
Fisher was perhaps the first celebrity economist, but his reputation during his lifetime was irreparably harmed by his public statements, just prior to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, claiming that the stock market had reached "a permanently high plateau." His subsequent theory of debt deflation as an explanation of the Great Depression was largely ignored in favor of the work of John Maynard Keynes. His reputation has since recovered in neoclassical economics, particularly after his work was revived in the late 1950s and more widely due to an increased interest in debt deflation in the Late-2000s recession. Some concepts named after Fisher include the Fisher equation, the Fisher hypothesis, the international Fisher effect, and the Fisher separation theorem.
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April 18, 2025
A work still relavent for today's world. I've never seen a solution to the issue of inflation, which involves adjusting the weight of gold issued for the dollar based on the CPI, anywhere else before. If this is because it's actually a terrible idea or not, I'm still unsure.
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