Recent Theories Concerning the Nature and Role of Interest

The place of interest rates in the economic process has since 1945 been mainly discussed, within the literature in English, along three lines: first, criticism and defence of Keynes’s position; secondly, advocacy of a stock or of a flow analysis, or of the need to combine them; thirdly, examination of the claim of interest to be a suitable and effective regulator of the pace of growth of the nation’s wealth. The following survey tries to explain and criticise this debate and to interject some suggestions into it, without aiming at more than an illustrative coverage of the literature. It is earnestly hoped that the absence of a name from this article will not be taken to imply any judgment on the value and importance of any person’s work.