Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle

Published originally in 1929, Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle is the first essay Friedrich A. Hayek wrote. It serves as a primer into Hayek’s monetary and capital theories. In it, he takes the time to dismember opposing monetary theories of the trade cycle, discarding faulty analysis and maintaining sound foundations, as to lead to his own monetary theory of the trade cycle.

Hayek’s trade cycle theory is largely based on the headway made in capital theory by Wicksell and Böhm-Bawerk, and Ludwig von Mises’s spectacular insights on monetary theory (The Theory of Money and Credit), and was later further developed in Prices & Production, published in 1931.