What Can Posterity Learn from Irving Fisher?

Katalin Botos ()
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Katalin Botos: University of Szeged, Pazmany Peter Catholic University

Financial and Economic Review, 2022, vol. 21, issue 2, 175-187

Abstract: This essay draws attention to some of the important aspects of, and learnings from, Irving Fisher's work. Fisher was the first economist to subject big volumes of data to analysis. He was one of the founders and first president of the Econometric Society. His name is associated with the quantity theory of money. He researched the purchasing power of money, index numbers, created the so-called Fisher index, wrote about the theory of interest rates, economic cycles, dwelled upon debt deflation and the theory of the Great Depression. He was one of the first advocates of abandoning the gold standard. He also drew attention to the psychological motives of the behaviours of economic actors, so the theories of Thalerian behavioural economics can regard him as their predecessor. His insight was used in managing the financial crisis of 2008. The steps towards reforming bank regulation can specifically be regarded as such measures, while Modern Monetary Theory stretched back as far as his thoughts on the regulation of the creation of money, i.e. the Chicago plan.

Keywords: history of theory; crisis theory; deflation; behavioural economics; financial markets; regulation policy; modern monetary theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B31 B52 C58 D91 E12 E31 E32 G28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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