Abstract
After briefly sketching the life and times of Knut Wicksell, three primary lines of contribution are examined to illustrate Wicksell’s contemporary relevance. The first is Wicksell’s treatment of capital and production in relation to the theory of marginal productivity. The second is Wicksell’s contribution to monetary theory, economic stability, and coordinationist macroeconomics. The third is Wicksell’s contribution to just taxation and the theory of public finance. While portions of each of these three examinations will be purely descriptive, considerable attention will also be given in each part to some contemporary themes that can plausibly be claimed to reflect a Wicksellian orientation.
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Notes
- 1.
For a contemporary statement of the issues that were joined in this debate, see George Selgin (1997).
- 2.
To be sure, Gardlund’s (1958, 249–250) description of Wicksell’s prison quarters creates an image of a minimun security, country club type of arrangement, where he could have his own furniture and food. He had to scrub the floor of his cell once a week, and other than that was able pretty much to read and write as he chose.
- 3.
In what was normally a 4-year program of study, Wicksell completed all the requirements in 2 years.
- 4.
- 5.
The various historical contributions are presented and assessed in George Stigler (1941).
- 6.
Schumpeter, to be sure, did not take a stationary state seriously as a description of reality. Rather he had a modeling strategy were a stationary state was continually punctuated by episodes of entrepreneurial creativity.
- 7.
For one interesting effort to pursue non-equilibrium, as distinct from either equilibrium or disequilibrium, see Donald Katzner (1998).
- 8.
I think it is possible to acknowledge the general validity of this orientation toward a time structure of production without professing any ability actually to develop some measure of the average period of production within a society.
- 9.
Ulrich Witt (1997) explains that F. A. Hayek fell into the same trap in his neo-Wicksellian formulation of business cycle theory. He started from a model of general equilibrium, as that was the only option that was available at the time. This point of departure was, however, inconsistent with his work on the use of knowledge in society, particularly when put in the context of a process of continual development, which he came subsequently to pursue.
- 10.
One such description that first appeared in 1952 is Robert Gordon (1961).
- 11.
I expand upon this belief in Wagner (1999).
- 12.
I should note that I am not using catallactical as a synonym for voluntary, but as an antonym for choice. Fiscal phenomena involve a mixture of exchange and duress, both of which I regard as catallactical, as distinct from choice-theoretic phenomena. See, for instance, Backhaus (1992) and Wagner (1997).
- 13.
For an examination of the relation between Wicksell, Buchanan and Tullock, and contemporary scholarship on public choice and constitutional economics, see Richard Wagner (1988).
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Wagner, R.E. (2012). Knut Wicksell and Contemporary Political Economy. In: Backhaus, J. (eds) Handbook of the History of Economic Thought. The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences, vol 11. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8336-7_20
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