I. INTRODUCTION
Aaron Director has long been a revered, but enigmatic, figure in the development of economics at the University of Chicago. Director taught in Chicago’s economics department from 1930 to 1934 and, after spending most of the intervening years working for the US government, taught in the Law School from 1946 until his retirement in 1965. His legacy as a revered figure stems mainly from his time at the Law School, where he played a key role in establishing the field of law and economics as a separate discipline and, in 1958, founded the Journal of Law and Economics. Footnote 1 His reputation as an enigmatic figure reflects the fact that he left very little behind in terms of a written track record through which to assess his contributions. During his career in the Law School, his views became known through his teaching. His influence on the profession was revealed in the writings of his students, many of whom became distinguished legal scholars, and through his influence on Law School colleagues.Footnote 2 As George Stigler put it, “most of Aaron’s articles have been published under the names of his colleagues” (quoted from University of Chicago News Office 2004, p. 2).
Director’s published output in the area of monetary economics was, if anything, even sparser than his published writings on law and economics. In the area of monetary economics, he had only four substantive publications: a 1931 book, The Problem of Unemployment, co-authored with Paul Douglas; a forty-five-page monograph, Unemployment, published in 1932; a twenty-seven-page monograph, The Economics of Technocracy, published in 1933; and a Reference Director1940 article, “Does Inflation Change the Economic Effects of War?,” published in the American Economic Review, that dealt with the appropriate monetary framework for a war economy. Director also signed several Chicago departmental memoranda, circulated in 1932 and 1933, that laid out the Chicago analysis of the business cycle and its preferred policy responses to the Great Depression. Following Director’s return to Chicago in 1946, he published nothing on the subject of money apart from a 1948 letter that appeared in the New York Times. Footnote 3
The scarcity of Director’s published writings in monetary economics is regrettable because his two appointments at the University of Chicago coincided with crucial stages in the development of Chicago monetary economics and because of Director’s personal intimacy with the two leading figures underpinning those stages. Director’s initial stint at Chicago from 1930 to 1934 coincided with the emergence of the Chicago monetary tradition in the early 1930s under the leadership of Henry Simons. That tradition stressed the role of an unstable velocity of circulation of money in initiating the business cycle, the perverse role played by a fractional-reserve banking system in exacerbating the cycle, the need of money-financed fiscal deficits to combat the cycle, and the necessity of both a monetary rule—either a stable-price-level rule or a fixed-quantity-of-money rule—and 100% reserves on demand deposits to help achieve long-run economic stability. Until the time of Simons’s death in 1946, Director and Simons had been the best of friends (Coase Reference Coase and Newman1998, p. 602). Director’s second stint at the University of Chicago, beginning in 1946, coincided with Milton Friedman’s appointment to Chicago’s economics faculty and with the emergence of Friedman’s monetarist framework from the late Reference Director1940s to the mid-1950s. That framework featured the functional stability of the demand for money, a monetary interpretation of the business cycle in general and the Great Depression in particular, and a constant-money-supply-growth rule for long-term stability; the framework also called for 100% reserve requirements but not as a prerequisite for economic stability. As was the case with Director and Simons, Director and Friedman were intimate friends. Director was Friedman’s brother-in-law, Friedman having married Director’s sister, Rose; the two brothers-in-law had a close personal relationship (Friedman and Friedman Reference Friedman and Friedman1998, ch. 14).Footnote 4
In addition to his close relationships with Simons and Friedman, Director also interacted closely with other members of the economics departments during his stints at Chicago. During the early 1930s members of the University of Chicago’s economics faculty, including Director, met regularly in departmental meetings and Sunday social gatherings at Frank Knight’s home to discuss the causes of the Great Depression and to formulate policy responses to the Depression (Tavlas Reference Tavlas2019a). Following his appointment to the Law School, Director “was responsible for generating a great deal of interaction among members of the Law School Faculty, the Economics Department, and the Business School”; he also participated in, and occasionally hosted, “bull sessions” among members of the economics faculty (Milton Friedman, quoted from Friedman and Friedman Reference Friedman and Friedman1998, pp. 194–195).
Having been at the University of Chicago during two crucial stages of the development of monetary economics at that institution, having had close personal relations with the two leading figures of each of those stages, and having participated in regular discussions among members of the economics departments during those stages, Director was in a unique position to shed light on the relationship between the monetary frameworks of those stages. Professional interest in that relationship stemmed from Friedman’s (Reference Friedman and Friedman1956a) claim that his monetary framework was an outgrowth of a 1930s and 1940s Chicago oral quantity-theory tradition, which “differed sharply from the atrophied and rigid caricature [of the quantity theory] that is so frequently described by the proponents of the new income-expenditure approach…. At Chicago, Henry Simons and Lloyd Mints directly, Frank Knight and Jacob Viner at one remove, taught and developed a more subtle and relevant version [of the quantity theory]” (Friedman Reference Friedman and Friedman1956a, p. 3). That claim led to a long-running debate about the nature of the Chicago monetary tradition and its relationship to Friedman’s monetary economics. An upshot of that debate as it stood in the early 1970s was that Friedman was accused of having “invented” a University of Chicago quantity theory tradition in order to launch a successful monetarist counter-revolution against the then-ruling Keynesian orthodoxy, an issue to which I return in the concluding section.Footnote 5 Although Director’s stays at Chicago bridged the two periods of dominance of Chicago monetary economics by Simons and Friedman, respectively, Director did not leave behind his view on the relationship of the monetary economics of those two Chicagoans in published work; neither did he leave behind published commentary on the role that he may have played in influencing the views of Simons and/or Friedman or on the influence of those two economists on his views.Footnote 6
In this paper, I provide evidence that makes Director’s role in the development of both stages of Chicago monetary economics less enigmatic. In particular, I show the close correspondence between (i) Director’s analysis of the mechanics of the business cycle and his proposed policy response to the cycle, as provided in his three aforementioned publications of the early 1930s; and (ii) the views that are known to have characterized the earlier Chicago monetary tradition. I show that Director brought those views, especially the emphasis on the important role played by the quantity of money in the economy and the need of policy rules, with him to his second stint at Chicago. In this connection, I discuss the contents of three hitherto undiscovered works by Director: two unpublished 1955 memoranda and a 1956 lecture (which is available as an online appendix to this article). In those works, Director emphasized the role of money in the economy and assessed alternative monetary rules, giving credit to Simons for having established the case in favor of rules. I show that Director advocated a constant money-supply-growth-rate rule in 1955, one year before Friedman publicly did so, with the implication that there had been cross-fertilization between Friedman’s formulation of a monetary-growth rule and that of Director. Like Friedman, Director also blamed the Fed for causing the Great Depression. I show that Director supported the 100% reserves scheme in the mid-1950s, although, like Friedman at that time, he did not view the scheme as essential for stabilizing the economy.
II. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHFootnote 7
Aaron Director was born in 1901 in Charterisk, Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian empire. At the time, his father worked in a flour mill. The mill failed on two occasions; following each of those events, his father emigrated alone to Portland, Oregon. Shortly after the second time, in early 1914, his father sent for the rest of his family.
Director graduated from Lincoln High School in Portland in 1921 and, along with fellow student Mark Rothkowitz (who would later become a famous abstract painter under the name of Mark Rothko), was admitted to Yale on a scholarship.Footnote 8 After graduating from Yale (in three years), Director worked in various jobs, including farm worker, coal miner, and teacher at the Newark Labor College. An interest in workers’ education led him to Europe (on a cattle boat) to study the education of adult workers. He returned to the United States to teach at Portland Labor College, run by the Oregon Federation of Labor.
In 1927, Director entered the University of Chicago as a graduate student to study labor economics with Paul Douglas, who had offered him a fellowship. In 1930, Director was made an instructor in the economics department, where he taught Labor Problems (Econ 240) and Introduction to Statistics (Econ 211). During the early 1930s, his interest gravitated away from labor economics toward monetary economics. This circumstance was noted in a January 31, 1934, letter from Harry Millis, who was chair of the economics department, to Jacob Viner; Millis complained that in his course on labor problems, Director had “come to the conclusion that there was nothing worth the while to talk about except monetary theory and policy and business cycles” (quoted from Van Horn Reference Van Horn and Emmett2010a, p. 266). Director was evidently a very effective teacher. Paul Samuelson wrote of his experience as an undergraduate at Chicago in the early 1930s as follows: “I had learned my first economics from Aaron Director, who had a tremendous impact on me” (letter from Samuelson to Milton Friedman, December 8, Reference Samuelson1995).
In the years leading up to 1934, Director came increasingly under the influence of Frank Knight, who had become embroiled in a bitter, personal altercation with Douglas. One consequence of this altercation was that Douglas refused to support the renewal of Director’s contract. Douglas’s justification was that Director had not established a strong publishing record. As a result of Douglas’s opposition, in 1934 Director’s teaching contract was not renewed.Footnote 9 He moved to the US Treasury for two years, before starting work on a dissertation under Viner on the quantitative history of the Bank of England. Director traveled to England in 1937 to conduct research on the dissertation but was denied access to the Bank’s records by the Bank’s officials.Footnote 10 Following his return from England, he spent the fall semester of 1938 at the University of Chicago, where he worked on his thesis and actively engaged in discussions with members of the economics department.Footnote 11 However, he never completed his dissertation. He returned to Washington, where he worked at the Brookings Institution and several government agencies until the end of World War II.
Following the death of Simons in 1946, apparently by suicide (Rose Friedman, from Friedman and Friedman Reference Friedman and Friedman1998, p. 155; Van Horn Reference Van Horn2014), Director agreed to take a position in the Chicago Law School. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Director headed the Free Market Study Project, financed by the William Volker Fund, which promoted free-market research. The proposal that Director head the project at the Law School had been pushed forward by Simons and Friedrich Hayek.Footnote 12 After Simons’s death, and following the offer made to Director to join the Law School, Hayek wrote to Director, encouraging him to accept the offer with the following argument: “It seems to me the only chance that the tradition which Henry Simons created will be kept alive and continued in Chicago” (letter from Hayek to Director, July 10, Reference Hayek and Emmett1946; quoted from Van Horn Reference Van Horn and Emmett2010a, p. 267). After his retirement from the Chicago Law School in 1965, Director moved to California, where he worked at the Hoover Institution and the Law School at Stanford University. Director died in 2004.
III. THE 1930s CHICAGO MONETARY TRADITION AND DIRECTOR
The Chicago Tradition
As mentioned, Chicago economists circulated several departmental memoranda in the early 1930s in which they laid out their business-cycle theory and policy framework. Three of these memoranda were particularly important in providing the Chicago tradition’s positions.Footnote 13
-
1. April 1932 Memorandum (Pettengill Memorandum 1932). The untitled memorandum, addressed to Congressman Samuel Pettengill, was three pages in length. The memorandum dealt with business-cycle theory and counter-cyclical policy; it was signed by twelve Chicagoans, including Director.Footnote 14
-
2. March/April 1933 Memorandum (Knight et al. Reference Knight1933). The untitled memorandum was five pages in length. It proposed both long-term banking reform, introducing the 100% reserves scheme, and short-term measures to reverse the economic contraction and deal with the collapse of the banking system. Knight and Simons were the progenitors of the banking reform measures, which were based on the English Bank Charter Act of 1844.Footnote 15 Eight Chicagoans, including Director, signed the memorandum.Footnote 16
-
3. November 1933 Memorandum (Simons et al. Reference Simons1933). This document was titled “Banking and Currency Reform” and was fourteen and one-half pages in length; it included a five-and-one-half-page appendix, “Banking and Business Cycles,” and a seven-page supplementary memorandum, “Long-time Objectives of Monetary Management.”Footnote 17 It was drafted by Simons, with considerable input from Director. In a letter to Douglas, Simons, responding to a query from Douglas about who drafted the (unsigned) November 1933 memorandum, wrote: “Actually I did write the thing alone; but it would never have been written except for my conversations with other people, Mr. Director especially” (letter, Simons to Douglas, October 2, Reference Simons1934).
Analytic framework. The key theoretical characteristics of the 1930s Chicago tradition were the following.Footnote
18
(i) The earlier Chicagoans used Irving Fisher’s equation of exchange,
$ MV+{M}^{\prime }{V}^{\prime }= PT $
, where
$ M $
is the quantity of money,
$ V $
is the velocity of circulation of money,
$ {M}^{\prime } $
is the quantity of demand deposits (or near moneys),
$ {V}^{\prime } $
is the velocity of circulation of demand deposits,
$ P $
is the average price level of the considerations traded for money, and
$ T $
is the annual physical volume of these considerations. The Chicagoans argued that economic fluctuations are caused by sharp, autonomous variations in
$ V $
. (ii) Changes in
$ V $
have a cumulative effect on prices and on real economic activity. Once prices start to rise, they trigger anticipations of further price increases. Thus, if individuals expect prices to rise, they will dishoard (i.e., increase the velocity of circulation,
$ V $
). (iii) The costs faced by businesses, especially wages and interest rates, are sticky. Hence, with changes in costs lagging behind changes in prices, price increases initially affect profits and output. (iv) The effects of cumulative changes in
$ V $
are greatly exacerbated by the perverse behavior of a fractional-reserve banking system, which expands credit—and, thus, demand deposits, or
$ {M}^{\prime } $
—in booms and contracts credit in depressions. As a result, the quantity of near-moneys (
$ {M}^{\prime } $
) and the velocity of near-moneys (
$ V^{\prime } $
) increase in booms and contract in depressions. (v) Because of the foregoing factors, the economic system is essentially unstable and there is no bottom to a depression.
Policy framework. What especially distinguished the earlier Chicago tradition from other approaches to the quantity theory in the 1930s was Chicago’s policy edifice. It consisted of two pillars: one involving counter-cyclical policies; and the other, policies for long-term economic stability.
Counter-cyclical policies. Anti-depression policy, the Chicagoans believed, requires an expansion in
$ M $
. The necessary variation in
$ M $
can be generated by either open-market operations or money-financed fiscal deficits. During depressions, policies operating through the banking system are not likely to be effective, in part because, during periods of low confidence, banks do not want to lend and businesses do not want to borrow. The most effective way to put money into circulation is through money-financed fiscal deficits.
Long-term stability. To stabilize the perverse behavior of a fractional reserve banking system, the earlier Chicagoans favored 100% reserve requirements on demand deposits, an idea that became known as the “Chicago Plan of Banking Reform” (Hart Reference Hart1935). The idea aimed to (1) eliminate the possibility of losses by depositors, thereby helping to prevent abrupt shifts from deposits into currency (due to the loss of confidence); (2) provide better control of the money supply; and (3) prevent the socialization of the bank-lending function and political control over investment. To reduce policy uncertainty and to moderate the business cycle, the Chicagoans believed that monetary policy should be conducted on the basis of a rule—ideally a rule that fixes the quantity of money; a second-best rule would be one that stabilizes the price level.Footnote 19 The November 1933 memorandum presented six possible rules, including a monetary-growth rule, a fixed-quantity-of-money rule, and a price-level-stabilization rule. Although the memorandum came out in favor of a rule that fixes the quantity of money, the memorandum emphasized that what is important is the adoption of a precise rule to reduce uncertainty rather than the choice among alternative rules. To help ensure that domestic objectives could be achieved, the Chicagoans called for the abandonment of the gold standard and for a move to a more flexible exchange-rate system.
Director in the Early 1930s
The following summary of Director’s business-cycle analytics and policy views is based on Douglas and Director (Reference Douglas and Director1931), and Director (Reference Director1932, Reference Director1933). Douglas and Director’s Reference Douglas and Director1931 book, The Problem of Unemployment, was primarily written in the summer of 1930, during which time both co-authors stayed at Swarthmore College; given Douglas’s seniority, Director regarded it as generous of Douglas to include his name as co-author.Footnote 20 I conjecture that the 1933 monograph, The Economics of Technocracy, was completed at the very end of 1932 or the beginning of 1933. The conjecture is based on the following: (1) the latest citation in the monograph (p. 5) is to a December 28, 1932, article published in The Nation, and (2) the monograph was published under the University of Chicago’s Public Policy Pamphlets series, then edited by Harry Gideonse; Gideonse’s “Introduction” to Director’s contribution was dated February 2, 1933. Consequently, all three publications by Director preceded the appearance of the March 1933 memorandum, which introduced the idea of 100% reserve requirements.
Analytical framework. Director believed that there are many initiating causes of the cycle; there is no way of isolating any specific cause (Director and Douglas Reference Douglas and Director1931, p. 168; Director Reference Director1932, p. 24).Footnote
21
At the bottom of a cycle, banks hold large amounts of reserves, costs have declined, stocks have been depleted, and less-efficient workers have been eliminated (Director and Douglas 1931, pp. 169–170; Director Reference Director1932, pp. 24–25). Eventually, optimism begins to take hold, and the expansionary phase of the cycles begins. Using the
$ MV+M'V'= PT $
framework, the banking system plays a crucial role in the cycle (Director and Douglas Reference Douglas and Director1931, p. 236; Director Reference Director1932, p. 24; Director Reference Director1933, pp. 19, 23). The expansion proceeds as follows. (i) The demand for credit rises; the large amount of reserves held by the banks supports an expansion of credit to meet the higher demand (Director and Douglas Reference Douglas and Director1931, p. 169; Director Reference Director1932, pp. 24–25; Director Reference Director1933, p. 22). (ii) Confidence rises and prices begin to increase but not equally; wages and interest costs lag behind, and, therefore, profits, output, and employment rise (Director Reference Director1932, pp. 25–26; Director Reference Director1933, p. 22).Footnote
22
(iii) The increase in prices gives rise to expectations of further price increases, and a “cumulative process” involving higher prices, still higher price expectations, and so on, ensues (Director and Douglas Reference Douglas and Director1931, p. 182; Director Reference Director1932, pp. 36–37). (iv) Expectations of higher prices along with sticky factor costs give rise to expectations of still higher profits. As a result, banks expand credit (
$ {M}^{\prime } $
) further (Director and Douglas Reference Douglas and Director1931, p. 171). (v) Two “tendencies” that reverse the expansion emerge: (a) banks’ reserve ratios decline so that banks raise interest rates and decrease the supply of loans, and (b) the increases in wages and other costs catch up with the rise in prices, decreasing profits (Director Reference Director1932, p. 26). (vi) Once a depression starts, there is no bottom to the fall in output: “There is no certainty of recovery from a widespread and serious depression…. [T]here is always the possibility of a complete breakdown of our economic organization and hence the great importance of any action to check the violent fluctuations in economic activity” (Director Reference Director1932, p. 28).
Counter-cyclical policies. Director believed that control over the quantity of money needed to play a key role in “eliminating or reducing industrial fluctuations” (Director Reference Director1932, p. 37). He argued that “the most significant line of action is that to be taken by central banks—the Federal Reserve System—in the United States” (Director Reference Director1932, p. 37). He also argued, “If the banks act promptly enough, they can so regulate the volume of bank credit [demand deposits] as to check any boom which develops, and counteract any depression which begins” (Director Reference Director1932, p. 38).
In Douglas and Director (Reference Douglas and Director1931), the authors assessed various methods of increasing the supply of money. They considered indirect methods—that is, open-market operations or a lowering of the discount rate—unlikely to be effective during depressions because “it is not certain that the reduction in cost [i.e., lowering of interest rates] will be sufficient to induce businessmen to take full advantage of it in view of the increasing unprofitableness of business” (Douglas and Director Reference Douglas and Director1931, p. 245; see also Director Reference Director1932, p. 38). Therefore, they opted for “more direct methods for seeing to it that the increased potential credit is actually put into circulation so that it can buoy up prices” (Douglas and Director Reference Douglas and Director1931, p. 245). Specifically, Douglas and Director advocated public works projects, preferably financed by “the issuance of added money by the government rather than by taxes” (Douglas and Director Reference Douglas and Director1931, p. 248; see also Director Reference Director1932, pp. 36–37).
Long-term stability. Douglas and Director (Reference Douglas and Director1931) introduced the view that rules are preferred over discretion into the Chicago literature. In this regard, after assessing Irving Fisher’s compensated-dollar proposal, they criticized the proposal for being “tied up with the consequences of the future gold production of the world” (Douglas and Director Reference Douglas and Director1931, p. 235).Footnote 23 Nevertheless, Douglas and Director argued that “Professor Fisher’s proposal has the merit of being automatic and not depending on the discretion of government or banking officials” (p. 235). As mentioned, the mechanism that underpinned cyclical dynamics in Douglas and Director (Reference Douglas and Director1931) and Director (Reference Director1932, Reference Director1933) was the effect of changes in the price level—with sticky costs—on profits and production. To stabilize the price level, and thus output, Douglas and Director proposed a monetary-growth rule: “If the supply of money and credit were to increase commensurately with the increase in production, the price level would be held constant and the goods produced would be sold at prices which would permit industry to go on with undiminished profits and without curtailment of activity” (Douglas and Director Reference Douglas and Director1931, p. 183). The authors expressed the view that a rule aimed at stabilizing the domestic price level entailed the abandonment of the gold standard and the need for flexible exchange rates: “It is thus possible for one nation to stabilize its price level … if it is willing to go off the gold exchange standard and allow its exchanges to fluctuate” (p. 251).
Discussion
The following points merit comment. First, there were clear similarities between both the analytic and policy frameworks of Director in the early 1930s and those contained in the 1932 and 1933 Chicago memoranda. Second, although Director did not advocate the 100% reserves scheme in his own work during the early 1930s, he called for a reform of the monetary system (Director Reference Director1933, p. 27) and signed the March 1933 memorandum that first put forward the 100% reserves scheme. Third, while the book co-authored by Douglas and Director was a collaborative effort, some of the policy views set forth in that book—namely, the advocacy of a monetary-growth rule to maintain economic stability and money-financed fiscal deficits to combat depressions —had been proposed by Douglas in an earlier paper (Douglas Reference Douglas1927). Hence, Douglas originated those two characteristics that came to mark the early 1930s Chicago policy framework. Fourth, prior to the 1931 book co-authored with Director, Douglas had not framed the issue of a rule in terms of a comparison of rules versus discretion. In the formation of Chicago monetary economics in the early 1930s, the argument that rules are preferable to discretion originated with both Douglas and Director.
IV. LATER VIEWS
1940 American Economic Review Paper
Director’s paper “Does Inflation Change the Economic Effects of War?” dealt with the means of financing a “transfer to government of the necessary funds for the acquisition of a given fraction of current output” that was expected to take place during the adjustment from a peacetime to a war economy (Reference Director1940, p. 343). Director began with the assumption that a wartime economy would lead to full employment, with a buildup of inflationary pressures.Footnote 24 Under such conditions, what “monetary framework” should the authorities follow? Director answered: “A given criterion, such as a stable price level or fixed quantity of money, may therefore be adopted” (Reference Director1940, p. 351). In the interim, to ensure that “approximately full employment is established,” Director argued that “monetary policy must be oriented around the task of increasing the aggregate output of the community, as well as making a portion of it available for the war effort” (Reference Director1940, p. 351). In advocating that monetary policy be assigned the role of attaining full employment while preventing inflation, Director acknowledged that the emphasis he placed on the use of monetary policy was out of fashion: “but we have generally assumed that both inflation and deflation are monetary phenomena in the sense that they could be prevented by monetary policy. The recent discrediting of monetary policy as a means of combating deflation need not concern us” (Reference Director1940, p. 352; italics added).
Director then turned to the issue of the transfer of resources from the private sector to the government under the assumption of a fully employed wartime economy. How should the funds needed for military expenditures be obtained—from borrowing or from taxation? Director preferred the taxation method. First, he expressed the view that “we are more likely to adhere to a policy of monetary stability if a much larger fraction of war expenditures is obtained through taxation” (Reference Director1940, p. 353). Second, and in contrast to the taxation method, Director argued that
large-scale borrowing is itself likely to promote monetary expansion. Even if the central bank had both the power and inclination to maintain monetary stability, war will subordinate its own policy to that of the treasury…. But treasuries are reluctant to pay high rates of interest, both because of the increased monetary cost of waging war and because of the adverse effect of high interest rates on institutions with large holdings of fixed interest-bearing assets. (Reference Director1940, p. 358)
Third, borrowing to finance war expenditures can lead to “the existence of a large public debt.” The larger the debt, the larger the interest payments and, thus, the larger the transfer of income “from income recipients as a whole to those in possession of public debt” (Reference Director1940, p. 359).
Director next discussed deficit financing during periods of unemployment, such as the situation that existed in late 1939. He advocated money-financed fiscal deficits to combat unemployment: “We should … give further consideration to the substitution of central bank credit for public borrowing” (Reference Director1940, p. 360). Director noted that “[the] opposition to the creation of money rests on the fear that the state will not exercise the necessary restraint, and that private banks will compete with the state in the creation of money, using the money created by the state as a reserve” (Reference Director1940, p. 360). How could the problem of the creation of credit by the private sector be dealt with? Director recommended the imposition of 100% reserve requirements on the banks: “The latter difficulty [i.e., the problem posed by the creation of credit by the banks] can, however, be overcome by applying the principle of Peel’s Act to the deposits created by the central bank for government war expenditures” (Reference Director1940, p. 360).Footnote 25
In summary, in his 1940 article Director affirmed the importance of money in the economy, called for a “criterion” in the form of a stable price level or fixed quantity of money to guide monetary policy during wartime, and advocated the 100% reserves scheme to counter the ability of banks to create or destroy deposits.
1948 New York Times Letter
In January 1948, Director, Friedman, and six other University of Chicago colleagues coauthored a letter titled “Control of Prices,” published in the New York Times. Footnote 26 The letter made the following points. (1) Variations in the general price level are “in the main determined by variations in the quantity of money.” (2) The quantity of money is dependent on the volume of reserves. (3) The Fed and the Treasury “are amply equipped with technical power to control the volume of money and, hence, the general level of prices.” (4) The “greatest contribution” that monetary policy can make is “stabilization of the price level.” (5) What is needed to control the general price level “is a legislative rule directing the monetary authorities to maintain stability” (Director et al. Reference Director1948).
The 1955 Memoranda
In July 1955, Director wrote two memoranda on monetary policy, both of which were sent to John Davenport—a four-page memorandum, dated July 11, and a three-and-one-half-page memorandum, dated July 29. The memoranda were apparently written in response to questions addressed to Director by Davenport. Davenport was a financial journalist who graduated from Yale in 1926, two years after Director graduated. Along with Director, Friedman, Knight, and Stigler, Davenport was one of the original thirty-eight members of the Mont Pelerin Society, having attended the first meeting of the society in 1947 (Milton Friedman, from Friedman and Friedman Reference Friedman and Friedman1998, p. 160). Davenport had been with Barron’s Weekly from 1949 to 1954 before becoming an assistant managing editor of Fortune in 1954. He was the author of the book The U.S. Economy, published in Reference Davenport1964.
The economic background to the July 1955 memoranda is relevant. The money stock (
$ M2 $
) rose at a fairly steady rate—2.8% from June 1953 to June 1954, and 3.9% from June 1954 to June 1955 (Friedman and Schwartz Reference Friedman and Schwartz1963, p. 614). A recession ended in May 1954, and a robust recovery followed (Meltzer Reference Meltzer2009, pp. 112–114). Consumer-price inflation was mildly negative in the year through August 1955. At the beginning of 1955, the Fed raised margin requirements on stock purchases and short sales from 50% to 60% “to prevent the recovery from being hampered by excess speculative activity” (Federal Reserve Board 1955, p. 84; quoted from Meltzer Reference Meltzer2009, p. 114). Evidently, the state of the economy, including the Fed’s action to raise margin requirements, prompted Davenport to ask for Director’s assessment of monetary policy. Director’s assessment was provided in the July 11 memorandum.
Director’s appraisal of the Fed’s policy stance was generally positive, although critical of the measure aimed at reducing speculative activity in the stock market. Director pointed to the steady growth in the money supply: “If the monetary authorities are now committed to a policy of increasing the supply of money by 2 to 3 percent per year, it marks a decided improvement in monetary management. Providing, of course, they adhere to this commitment and quit worrying about particular sectors of the economy” (Reference Director1955a, p. 1). With regard to the Fed’s attempt to curb stock-market speculation, Director queried: “How does one know that [stock] prices are too high?” (Reference Director1955a, p. 1). He expressed the view that the Fed’s concern with stock-market speculation could trigger an unwarranted “general monetary contraction” (p. 2). He continued: “Facing the [contractionary] consequences of such action on the general level of activity, [the Fed] will [then] go out of [its] way to foster monetary expansion,” bringing about “a general inflation” (p. 2).
Director then considered the appropriate framework for monetary policy. He asked: “What standards or rules shall it [the monetary authority] use?” (Reference Director1955a, p. 3). He wrote:
[The Fed] has these alternatives.
-
a. Regulate the supply of money to prevent substantial changes in the level of economic activity.
-
b. Regulate the supply of money to prevent significant changes in the general level of prices.
-
c. Increase the supply of money by some given percentage per year. (1955a, p. 3)
“Rule (a),” he argued, “provides more discretion than we should provide any government agency” (p. 3). While he thought that there was “little difference between rule (b) and rule (c),” rule (c), he noted, “requires no forecasting, and no discretion” (p. 4).Footnote 27
Director concluded his appraisal of the Fed’s monetary-policy framework with a call for a monetary-growth rule and a comment on the fixed-quantity-of-money rule (cum falling price level) as contained in the November 1933 memorandum:Footnote 28
A steady increase in the supply of money is required to prevent a decline of prices resulting from the growth of output due to the growth of the labor force and capital equipment, even in the absence of increases in productivity. While we could adjust ourselves to a falling price level, this would entail unnecessary strain on the economy. (Reference Director1955a, p. 4)
Director followed his advocacy of a monetary-growth rule with a criticism of Hayek’s position on such a rule, noting that, all else equal, an increase in the supply of money would keep prices stable in the event that productivity increases. He continued: “Some people call this inflation. And Hayek and others have talked about resulting structural maladjustments with disastrous consequences. I wish I knew what they are saying” (Director Reference Director1955a, p. 4).
The July 29 memorandum (Director Reference Director1955b) evidently represented an initiative by Director to answer queries about monetary policy that Davenport had addressed to Hayek. A handwritten note by Director to Davenport was attached to the memorandum. It read, in part, as follows: “Dear John: I am enclosing some brief additional notes on your questions. I doubt whether Hayek will answer your questions. He has gone to Aspen for the month…. Monetary policy has been one of the bright spots of the Eisenhower administration. So you better be cautious in undermining it.”
The July 29 memorandum was mainly a critique of Hayek’s monetary framework. Director stated: “[Hayek] still adheres to the conclusion that inflation—including an increase in the supply of money which because of an increase in productivity keeps general prices stable—creates maladjustments…. But he cannot set out the mechanism which leads to his conclusion” (Director Reference Director1955b, p. 1).Footnote 29
The memorandum contains an important argument about the origins of the Great Depression that is directly related to Friedman’s emerging monetarism of the 1950s. In the first half of the 1950s, Friedman introduced and tested two hypotheses about the Federal Reserve’s role in the Depression, namely that (1) the Fed initiated the Great Depression with its policy tightening in 1928 and 1929, and (2) the Fed deepened the Depression with its policies of the early 1930s. Friedman posited the second hypothesis in 1951 and confirmed it in 1954; he introduced the hypothesis that the Fed had caused the Depression in 1956 and confirmed it two years later.Footnote 30 Evidently, discussions between Director and Friedman in the mid-1950s on the causes of the Great Depression had been taking place. In the July 29 memorandum, Director stated: “There was nothing wrong with the 20’s except that they did not last long enough. What I just outlined is not an inaccurate account of what happened when the Board became concerned with overspeculation and brought on the depression” (Reference Director1955b, p. 4).
1956 Lecture on Full Employment Policies
In June 1956, Director gave a series of eight lectures at the Institute of Humane Studies. Seven of the lectures dealt with issues related to the ideas of classical economists and to the issue of monopolies. However, one of the lectures, titled “Full Employment Policies,” focused on the role of money in the economy. The lecture was delivered in two parts on June 20; each part lasted approximately forty-five minutes. From the question-and-answer session towards the end of the lecture, it is clear that Hayek was in attendance. I describe the views on money expressed by Director in that lecture and I compare them with Friedman’s views in the 1950s.Footnote 31
Director began the lecture by expressing the view that the Keynesian emphasis on the role of the government’s income and expenditure policies in stabilizing economic activity—a role that he considered incompatible with the liberal emphasis on the minimization of the government’s involvement in the economy—was giving way to a revival of interest in the role of monetary factors in the determination of short-run variations in income (Director Reference Director1956, p. 2). This revival of interest, he argued, directed attention to an examination of the appropriate monetary system (pp. 2–3). That system, he believed, was an exception to the liberal emphasis on reducing the role of government. Director stated that “the issuance of fiduciary currency is a natural monopoly” and should not be left unregulated: “Monetary arrangements are a necessary function of government” (p. 2). Once it is determined that the government has a role in the monetary system, Director argued, “The only problem that remains is the [choice of monetary] standard that should be adopted.” The liberal position, he stated, is that “discretionary authorities should be eliminated or at least minimized” (p. 3).Footnote 32
Director maintained that discretionary policies cannot successfully stabilize the economy for two main reasons. First, to be successful, such policies need to have access to accurate forecasts, but there is an “inherent difficulty—some would say, the impossibility—of forecasting short run changes in the economy” (p. 3).Footnote 33 Second, echoing the argumentation made in the November 1933 memorandum, Director stated that a basic component of successful policies is to “provide some certainty in the way of [policy] expectations,” which “[discretionary policies] cannot provide” (pp. 3–4). Such certainty can be provided only by a rule. What is important, he argued, is not the particular rule followed but that the rule be complied with. At this point, Director referred to Simons.
I would point out that the late Professor Simons’s original emphasis was primarily on the role of stable rules [rather] than on the character of the rules themselves. There were occasions when he was inclined to argue that it really didn’t make a difference what kind of monetary system you establish—one that led to rising prices or falling prices, and so on—but what was important was that the rules should be fixed and known in advance so that the community could rely upon them. (Director Reference Director1956, p. 4)
Director then considered the following alternative monetary standards.
Gold standard. Its main advantages, Director stated, are “the fact that it provides a check to governmental irresponsibility,” and “it removes discretion or authority” (Director Reference Director1956, p. 4). However, it contains the following problems. (1) It is costly since it entails devoting “a fraction of [the community’s] resources to produce the gold necessary” to operate a monetary standard (Director Reference Director1956, p. 4).Footnote 34 (2) While it eliminates discretionary authority, it does not stabilize expectations, which would have to be based on prospective changes in gold production. (3) It is subject to destabilizing shifts from deposits to currency—unless there is a system of insurance on deposits or the abolition of the fractional-reserve system: “But if fractional reserves were abolished, then the cost of producing the necessary gold to continue operations on the present level of prices might not be a minor factor anymore” (Director Reference Director1956, p. 5). (4) Its successful operation depends on not only the adherence of any particular country “but it mainly requires the adherence of other countries” (pp. 4–5).
Director’s overall evaluation of the gold standard was the following: “My own conclusion is that the conditions for assuring adhence to the system are now lacking. Consequently, we can no longer say that it will provide a check to government irresponsibility” (Director Reference Director1956, p. 5). What is needed, he argued, is “a new religion” to replace the gold standard (Director Reference Director1956, p. 5).
Here, the influence of Simons on Director’s thinking deserves mention. In his 1936 paper “Rules versus Authorities in Monetary Policy,” Simons wrote:
In a free-enterprise system we obviously need highly definite and stable rules of the game, especially as to money…. To put our present problem as a paradox—we need to design and establish with the greatest intelligence a monetary system good enough so that, hereafter, we may hold to it unrationally —on faith—as a religion, if you please. The utter inadequacy of the old gold standard, either as a definite system of rules or as the basis of a monetary religion, seems beyond intelligent dispute. (Simons [Reference Simons1936] 1948 p. 169; italics added)
Price-level stability. Director argued that the main advantage of a rule that aims to stabilize the price level is that it is easy to comprehend. Its disadvantages are: (1) it introduces “a considerable amount of discretion with respect to the timing and magnitude of the operations of the monetary authority”; and (2) “it introduces the problem of the definition of the price level” (Director Reference Director1956, p. 6). Friedman (Reference Friedman1960, p. 87) provided a similar assessment of the use of price stability as a policy guide: “Entirely aside from the technical problem of the specific index number of prices that should be used, the key difficulty is that the link between price changes and monetary changes over short periods is too loose and too imperfectly known to make price level stability an objective and reasonably unambiguous guide to policy.”Footnote 35
Fixed quantity of money. Director stated that a rule that fixes the quantity of money was “the original position of the so-called Chicago view or Chicago School, which is essentially the work of Henry Simons” (Director Reference Director1956, p. 6). A “great advantage” of such a rule is that it is easily understood. The early 1930s Chicagoans, he noted, combined their advocacy of a policy rule with the 100% reserves proposal:
In the original formulation of the fixed-quantity-of-money rule or the stable-level-of-prices rule, great importance was attached to the reorganization of the banking structure, which is really a different thing from the rule adopted. This is the part of the formulation which has received most criticism. If it had not been incorporated in the original scheme, the scheme [i.e., policy rule] itself might have received a lot more support. Why this should be I have never known except the fact that we seem to believe that everything we have must be the result of natural forces and any drastic change [such as] that embodied in the 100 percent reserve banking scheme suspect. (pp. 6–7)
Director then discussed the rationale underlying the 100% scheme. In common with the argument made in the November 1933 memorandum, he argued that the scheme aimed to prevent the “possible loss of confidence in banks [during] unfavorable conditions which would lead to striking changes in the supply of money” (Director Reference Director1956, p. 7). One key development had taken place, however, after November 1933 that reduced the possibility of a loss in confidence in banks: “At the time this proposal was first made we didn’t have an insurance system for banking. Now [with deposit insurance] this [reason for the 100% scheme] has been largely eliminated” (pp. 7–8).
Director also provided an argument in favor of the 100% reserves scheme not contained in the November 1933 memorandum: “the choice between fractional reserves and 100 percent reserves depends on the extent to which we want to rely on discretionary authorities” (p. 8). The argument ran as follows. Suppose, as Director did, that monetary policy followed a growth-rate rule: “With 100 percent reserve banking, all the authorities would have to do is to make certain that they, themselves, created the necessary addition, say, to the quantity of money.” Under a fractional reserve system, in contrast, the authorities would have to “create that amount of reserves which they thought would carry with it the necessary increase in the quantity of money.” Therefore, “if the fractional reserve system responded in different ways over [different] periods of time to the level of reserves, then the monetary authorities would have to be given some discretion in determining the increase in the level of reserves in order to accomplish the final increase in the total quantity of money” (Director Reference Director1956, p. 8). Director concluded his assessment of the 100% reserves scheme as follows: “there is still a great deal to be said for working in the direction of a banking system with 100 percent reserves; but, it is not nearly as crucial a factor as we once considered it” (p. 8).
During the question-and-answer period toward the end of the presentation, a member from the audience, whom Director identified as “Professor Hayek,” asked the following question: “What would happen under a 4 percent annual money-growth rule if the level of prices suddenly went up, by 10 percent or 15 percent? Then the monetary authorities are no longer in there” (i.e., are not able to act in a discretionary way to reduce inflation). Director’s response was: “But our position [is that] these things will not happen in such a [rules-based] system. But this is an empirical issue” (p. 12).
Three final points about arguments made by Director in the lecture are important. First, Director expressed the view that the emerging empirical evidence indicated that the “primary source of instability [in the economy] has not been … changes in preferences [with regard to consumption and investment], but the primary source has been changes in the quantity of money” (Director Reference Director1956, p. 10). With Friedman and his collaborators having been the main producers of that evidence, Director’s view on the role of money in the economy had clearly been influenced by the work of Friedman. Second, in stating his preference for rules over discretion, Director stated that “a necessary implication of an independent national monetary policy is for free, flexible exchange rates” (p. 6). As mentioned, the view that a flexible exchange-rate regime is needed to conduct domestic monetary policy was a characteristic that marked the 1930s tradition; that view also marked Friedman’s ([Reference Friedman and Friedman1948] 1953) work. Third, in response to the question: “How would you modify the Fed?,” Director replied: “The first thing to do is abolish it and substitute a rule under which the money supply would increase by 2 percent or 3 percent per year” (p. 12). In a December 5, Reference Friedman1981, interview in Human Events, Friedman stated, “I have been in favor of abolishing the Federal Reserve System for as long as I can remember” (quoted from Nelson Reference Nelson2020, p. 435).Footnote 36
Discussion
As mentioned, the key elements of Friedman’s monetarism emerged during the period from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s. In 1948, Friedman held the following views. (1) In line with the early 1930s Chicago approach that changes in the quantity of money be effectuated through the government’s fiscal position, he proposed a rule under which fiscal policy would be used to implement changes in the money supply. The stock of money would be increased when there was an increase in the budget deficit by the amount of the deficit; it would be decreased when there was a surplus in the federal budget by the amount of the surplus (Friedman [Reference Friedman and Friedman1948] 1953, p. 145). (2) To deal with what Friedman regarded as the “inherent instability” of a fractional reserve banking system, Friedman called for 100% reserve requirements against demand deposits.
On the basis of his research—both his own and that with his collaborators, especially Anna Schwartz—by the mid-1950s Friedman’s views on 100% reserves and on the appropriate rule had changed; he no longer considered a fractional-reserve banking system to be a potent force in the business cycle (Reference Friedman1954; Reference Friedman1960, ch. 3). An important reason underlying his changed view was the establishment of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which, he believed, strengthened the resilience of the banking system (Reference Friedman1954, p. 60; Reference Friedman1960, p. 67). Nevertheless, Friedman continued to support the 100% reserves scheme throughout his career and, in doing so, gave credit to his teachers Simons and Mints for having earlier proposed the scheme (Reference Friedman1960, p. 65). His support for the scheme was based on two arguments. First, he believed that “federal insurance of deposits involves a substantial increase in government intervention into the lending and investing process” (Reference Friedman1960, pp. 67–68); in contrast, the 100% reserves scheme would ensure the safety of deposits while also reducing the rationale for government intervention. Second, “decisions by holders of money about the form in which they want to hold money and by banks about the structure of their assets tend to affect the amount available to be held. This has often been referred to as the ‘inherent instability’ of a fractional reserve system” (Reference Friedman1960, p. 66). The 100% reserves scheme, Friedman argued, would provide improved control over the quantity of money compared with the fractional-reserve system.Footnote 37
In a lecture delivered in 1956, Friedman stated that he had come to believe that his earlier proposal that the federal budget be used to control the money supply to be “more sophisticated than is necessary” (Reference Friedman1956b, p. 5). In its place, he proposed—for the first time in public—a money-growth rule under which the money supply would increase by 4% per year (Friedman Reference Friedman1956b, p. 7). Thus, by the mid-1950s both Director and Friedman had reached similar views on (1) the important role played by money in driving economic activity, (2) the role of the Fed in the Great Depression, (3) the need of a money-growth rule, (4) the need of flexible exchange rates, and (5) the assessment that 100% reserve requirements would be a desirable but, because of the advent of deposit insurance, not crucial, factor for the financial system. On points (1) and (2), Director had clearly been influenced by Friedman’s research showing the role played by changes in the quantity of money in driving the business cycle in general and the Great Depression in particular.Footnote 38
V. CONCLUDING REMARKS
In the early 1970s Friedman was accused of “inventing” an oral Chicago quantity-theory tradition. The accusation was motivated by Don Patinkin’s (Reference Patinkin1969) work demonstrating that the theoretical frameworks used by the early 1930s Chicagoans and by Friedman were different. Based on Patinkin’s work, Harry Johnson argued that, to create a successful monetarist counter-revolution, Friedman faced the “problem of establishing … a plausible linkage with pre-Keynesian orthodoxy,” a problem that Friedman solved, according to Johnson, with “the invention of University of Chicago oral tradition that was alleged to have preserved the fundamental truth among a small band of the initiated through the dark years of the Keynesian despotism” (Johnson Reference Johnson1971, pp. 10–11).Footnote 39
This paper has presented evidence—much of it for the first time in the literature—on the monetary views of Aaron Director in the early 1930s and the mid-1950s, both of which were crucial stages in the development of Chicago monetary economics. Director interacted closely with Simons in the earlier period and, at a time when the economics profession downplayed the role of monetary forces in the economy, with Friedman in the later period. Director transmitted—and perhaps contributed to—key ideas that marked the earlier Chicago quantity-theory tradition, including the views that: (i) the quantity of money matters, both as a counter-cyclical tool and for the maintenance of long-term stability; (ii) rules are necessary to reduce policy uncertainty and maintain economic stability; (iii) there is a need for flexible exchange rates; and (iv) 100% reserves are desirable. Each of these characteristics was put forward in published work by Simons before his death in 1946, by Mints until his retirement in 1953, by Director (in unpublished work) in the mid-1950s, and by Friedman beginning in the late 1940s/early 1950s. In addition, Mints, Director, and Friedman blamed the Fed for precipitating the Great Depression. With very few exceptions, these views were not held by any economist outside of Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s.Footnote 40
In May 1967, Friedman delivered the third in a series of “Henry Simons Lectures” at the University of Chicago Law School. The title of Friedman’s lecture was “The Monetary Theory and Policy of Henry Simons.” Friedman described Simons as “above all, a shaper of my ideas” (Friedman Reference Friedman1967, p. 1). The introduction to Friedman’s presentation was made by Director. In his unpublished introduction, Director made a statement that affirmed his belief in the existence of a Chicago monetary tradition: “One of the fields which Henry Simons cultivated was that of monetary theory and policy. That he did so accounts in no small measure for the continued interest in, and cultivation of, this subject at the University of Chicago, while it languished elsewhere” (Director Reference Director1967, p. 3). That Director also cultivated that field accounts in no small measure for the continued interest in monetary theory and policy at the University of Chicago and for the continuity between the monetary framework of Chicago of the early 1930s and that of Chicago of the 1950s and after.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS
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