Horizontalists and Verticalists: 25 years later

The latest issue of the Review of Keynesian Economics includes a special mini-symposium honouring the 25th anniversary of Basil Moore's book, Horizontalists and Verticalists (1988). Basil Moore is Professor Extraordinary in the Department of Economics at Stellenbosch University.

The book has been particularly influential in advocating a "horizontalist" view of monetary policy, which is that in a credit-based economy, the money supply is endogenous and determined by demand, and not by central bank supply of high-powered money, as the "verticalists" believe. In one of the mini-symposium articles, the authors' (Bindseil and König) assessment is that "the book has impressively stood the test of time and, despite part of textbook economics still insisting on the money multiplier as an explanation for the money supply, it is not much of an exaggeration to say that we have all become ‘Horizontalists’ in the last 25 years."

The special issue's contents can be viewed here (one of the articles can be downloaded freely - click here).