Author: Irwin Collier

The monetary economist whose methodological contributions will likely be read long after the heated debates about monetarism lie cold in university archives or buried in the footnotes of historians of economics, Thomas Mayer, was born January 18, 1927 in Vienna. His family was able to leave Austria in the late 1930s which gave him the opportunity to go to college (Queens) and graduate school (Columbia) in New York City. This led to a long, distinguished academic career that culminated in a professorship at the University of California, Davis. He died in Berkeley, California June 12, 2015. 

This post adds to the subcollection “Funny Business” here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror that is dedicated to attempts at nominal and real humor by economists. At the time of the writing of the following “Fairy Tale” (est. ca. 1952-53), Thomas Mayer was probably still a doctoral candidate, or perhaps a freshly-minted Ph.D., in economics at Columbia University. Martin Bronfenbrenner thought enough of this little mimeographed paper to have kept it in his files of macroeconomic teaching materials. There is no clue there, when or how he came to have a copy of the paper. In preparing this post, I discovered that only some archival boxes away at Duke’s Economists’ papers archive there is also another copy of the “Fairy Tale” in the Thomas Mayer Papers collection.

In his brief biographical tribute to Thomas Mayer, Kevin Hoover (see below for exact citation) wrote “Tom reported that Keynes’s General Theory was perhaps the first economics book that he read while still in school in England and that he was driven to keep studying economics until he was able to understand the book – a feat that he, unlike many others, claims to have accomplished”.  My favorite lines from Hoover are the following:

[Thomas Mayer] was neither a market fundamentalist nor a government romantic, but occupied the ideologically uncomfortable middle: the left thought that he was a monetarist; the right, a Keynesian. He reported having been cast off the monetarist Shadow Open-Market Committee for left-wing deviationism.

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Tributes to Thomas Mayer

Monetarism and the Methodology of Economics, edited by Kevin D. Hoover and Steven M. Sheffrin (Edward Elgar, 1995) is a collection of 14 original essays in honour of Thomas Mayer focusing on the themes of monetarism, the transmission mechanism for monetary policy, the political economy of monetary policy and the methodology of empirical economics. Contributions by: King Banaian, Mark Blaug, Martin Bronfenbrenner, Richard C.K. Burdekin, Thomas F. Cargill, Milton Friedman, C.A.E. Goodhart, D. Wade Hands, Abraham Hirsch, Kevin D. Hoover, David Laidler, Thomas Mayer, James L. Pierce, Steven M. Sheffrin, Richard J. Sweeney, Thomas D. Willett, Wing Thye Woo.

Hoover, Kevin D. (2015). Thomas Mayer. Journal of Economic Methodology 22 (4):526-527.

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AER Membership Bio, 1974

Mayer, Thomas, academic; b. Vienna, Austria, 1927. Educ. B.A. Queens Coll., 1948; Ph.D., Columbia U., 1953. Doc. Dis. The Population Argument of the Stagnation Thesis, 1953. Fields 310, 020. Pub. Permanent Income, Wealth and Consumption, 1972; Monetary Policy in the United States, 1968; Intermediate Macroeconomics, 1972. Res. Interpretation of Interest Rate Snap-Back; Explanation of Excess Reserves in 1930’s. Prev. Pos. Vis. Assoc. Prof., U. of Calif., 1961-62, Assoc. Prof., Mich. State U., 1956-61, Asst. Prof. U. of Notre Dame, 1954-56. Cur. Pos. Prof., U. of Calif., since 1962. Address 3054 Buena Vista Way, Berkeley, CA 94708.

Source: American Economic Review (October 1974). Directory of Members, 1974, p. 262.

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A FAIRY TALE¹

By Anon Ymous²

Long, long ago there lived in a far and distant country a Happy Family. They were the Natural and the Market Rate of Interest. They loved each other dearly, and had two beautiful and good children: Price Level Stability and Full Employment. The parents always stuck together, for they knew that if they should part their children would be lost.

Near their house was a big wood. It was largely unexplored, and in it there lived a fierce Giant with the terrifying name of Central Bank Policy. He was a great, big, strong man. But instead of helping the two parents to keep their children happy, he would often fight with them. He pretended to love their two children dearly, but in reality he loved his own child more. His child had a shock of golden blond hair, and was for that reason known as Goldie Standard. Sometimes this child would get sick, and then her father wanted to separate our happy family. He would try to take the mother, the Market Rate of Interest, into the wood with him to take care of Goldie Standard, and to make her well again. Of course the father, poor Natural Rate of Interest, could not follow. The two sweet children would not have had the care they needed, and would starve. Poor little Full Employment would lose her full, round cheeks, and her sister, Price Level Stability, would feel so weak that she would stumble and fall many times. But Central Bank Policy did not mind this, though he pretended to, for he loved Goldie Standard above anything in the world — even though she was often naughty, and taught little Price Level Stability many naughty tricks like climbing up and down all over the Time Series.

Since the giant Central Bank Policy would have had great difficulty in stealing dear Market Rate of Interest by himself alone, he had a group of supporters called Orthodox Economists. They were on his side, for they thought that if Goldie Standard should die there would be nobody to exercise loving care over him; then, in a fit of temper, he might start to play around with the Printing Press.

One bright day a fair prince from far away arrived in this country. His name was Prince Keynes. He was the son of the ruling house of Cambridge. He saw at once what was going on in the country. Indeed, he did not find this difficult, for he had once read a vague prophecy by a Swede that such a country existed. He soon had Tract the matter down, and decided to help the poor family, but at first he did not quite know how. He studied for a long, long time, writing down his observations in a big diary. So that the giant would not find it, he hid it in a tree (not in a pumpkin [Curator’s note: a clear reference to the “Pumpkin papers” hidden by Whittaker Chambers then revealed in the case of Alger Hiss. Very much in the news 1949-50]), and for this reason it is until this day called “Tree-t’is”. (Sorry!)

Now in watching the animals playing around, especially the bears and the bulls, Prince Keynes got an idea. He built a trap, with a Schedule like a ladder; and if you followed it down you fell into a Liquidity Preference. Now the Giant’s helpers, the Orthodox economists, did not know this, and themselves fell into it, and became All Wet. Then Prince Keynes came up and told them: “I will help you out and will tell you a great Secret, if you will help me to free the poor mother, dear Market Rate of Interest.” They agreed, and so in a low voice he told them: “Always and ever and ever, when the sun setteth and when it rises, in every land and on every sea, S equals I.”

The orthodox economists were very glad to learn this Secret, and led Prince Keynes to the place where the poor mother, dear Market Rate of Interest, was imprisoned. They were the Prince’s friends by now, and went with him wherever he went, always telling each other: S equals I. Then they visited the Giant and taught him a new Canticle our Prince had invented. It went like this:

“To keep the Economy in a boom?³
Raise the Propensities — Invest and Consume —
For the rate of interest is but the consequence
Of the amount of money and liquidity preference.
And S = I whatever you say,
Unless you use young Robertson’s “day”.
Under-employment an equilibrium can be
As during the thirties any fool could see.
Wage-cuts can never full employment quite bring;
To be sure that you know it, this ditty I sing.”

The Giant was more or less convinced by this Canticle. And in any event, Goldie Standard had been so naughty that even the lady who lived in Threadneedle Street, and loved her like a mother, did not want to have anything more to do with her.

So the Giant decided to make peace with the family; and he grew to love both children, though he preferred Full Employment to Price Level Stability. Not only did he spend [his] time in keeping the family happy, but he even persuaded an animal which had inhabited the woods with him, called Fish-Call-Policy, to join him in this enterprise. So then all lived happily ever after until the next Depression.

With apologies,⁴
Thomas Mayer

Columbia University

Footnotes

1. The following is an excerpt from the author’s forthcoming magnus opium, “Economics for Every Child”.
2. The author is Lecturer in Economics and Nursery Tales at the Progressive Progress Kindergarten, Atlantis 5. He is indebted for help and criticism to himself, who however is not to be charged with any responsibility for the following. Since consumption determines the course of production, all the responsibility rests with the reader.
3. Just what did you expect to find down here? A definition of a boom, perhaps? You might have known that a paper like this has no sensible footnotes. Of course, if you are scholarly enough to insist on a reference, look at pages 385-403 of the General Theory, where you will find an excellent summary of its doctrines — arranged alphabetically. [Curator’s note: pages are the index of Keynes’ General Theory.]
4. The author categorically refuses to apologize to the reader. If he has read this far it is his own fault and it serves him right, and anyone who had not read this far has no business looking at the final footnote.

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Martin Bronfenbrenner Papers, 1939-1995. Box 25, Folder “Teaching Materials: Macro-econ n.d.”.

Copy also in Box 1 of the Thomas Mayer Papers, also in the Economists’ Papers Archive at Duke.