This essay provides the kind of concise and incisive survey that we have learned to await with anticipation from the ever-active pen of Professor Johnson. This time he is discussing the role of monetary policy as a stabilization device. The paper, originally prepared for the Canadian Royal Commission on Banking and Finance, deals mainly with Canadian problems. But the author ranges over the pros and cons of a number of issues of general interest, and there are useful comments on a variety of open questions.

Interest in the short-run behavior of the demand for money has been stimulated in recent years notably by the studies of Professors Baumol, Tobin, and Friedman.1 Three issues which have been reopened by their studies will be discussed here. First, what factors influence the demand for money and changes in cash balances over short periods of time? Second, what is the role of interest rates in these short-term changes? Third, are there economies of scale in the holding of money balances? These questions are of some relevance for monetary theory and for discussions of the impact and utility of discretionary monetary policy.

PROFESSOR EISNER'S attempt to revive the liquidity takes the form of five objections to the findings reported by Bronfenbrenner and Mayer.2 In this note I will direct my discussion to the question of evidence for the trap and comment only briefly on other points which Eisner raises. The main burden of my argument is that evidence for or against the liquidity must rest on a demand function for money which explains more than the period surrounding the supposed trap. The post-1 920 data alone are inadequate to support (or reject) the hypothesis. For it has long been known that long-term bond yields peaked in the U.S. in 1920-21 and thereafter declined. A similar movement is shown by velocity. At issue are two questions: (1) whether the data for the 1930's and 1940's show a movement of two variables which are related or a co-movement of two variables each of which declined for any one of a number of other reasons,3 and (2) if the variables are related, do they show evidence of a trap?

THEORIES of monetary and financial markets are generally concerned with the behavior of broad aggregates. As yet, economists have not successfully blended the rich variety of institutional details that make up the financial markets with the theory of relative prices. Perhaps as a result of our procedures and the state of knowledge, our policy recommendations are often suggestions for pervasive changes in institutional arrangements. Many of our perennial policy debates are concerned with issues such as whether or not the Federal Reserve should be replaced by an immutable rule or whether banks should be prevented from independently creating money

IN the continuing debate about the role of money, credit, and monetary policy in our society, one of the major issues centers around the specific incidence of "tight money" on individual business firms. On the one hand, leading proponents of monetary controls as a regulatory device have emphasized the general, impersonal nature of such controls. They have argued that the impact of monetary policy is determined by the reaction of individual borrowers to changed market conditions.

Recently, in this REVIEW (J. K. Galbraith, "Market Structure and Stabilization Policy,this REVIEW, XXXIX (May 1957) I24-33) Professor Galbraith has asserted that in the case of monetary policy the "inflation can be controlled by denying credit to what are, in a general way, the least powerful firms" (page 132). Elsewhere, these least powerful firms are identified as the smaller firms (pages 131, 132, 133), and evidence concerning the distribution of bank loans by size is presented, to indicate that "while the case cannot be proven, there is a strong probability that in the last couple of years the effect of monetary policy has been to ration credit from all sources away from smaller firms in the competitive sector and to larger firms in the oligopolistic sector" (page 133).

Volume 2 of A History of the Federal Reserve covers mainly the years of inflation and disinflation, followed by a return to what is now regarded as relatively low inflation. It treats four questions: Why did inflation start? Why did it continue for 15 or more years, from 1965 to about 1982? Why did it end? Why did it not return? In this paper, I give an overview of the material that I consider in much greater detail in my book

THE CONJECTURE that "credit rationing" plays an important role in decisions to purchase or consume recurs frequently in discussions of monetary policy, banking markets and consumption or investment decisions. Repetition of the phrase "cost and availability of credit" in official statements strengthens the impression that cost and "availability" have separable and independent effects on decisions to consume or invest. A large literature develops this theme