Profile Major Works Resources

Clark Warburton, 1896-1979.

American Institutionalist economist, and proto-Monetarist.

Clark Warburton was educated at Columbia under Wesley Clair Mitchell, receiving his Ph.D. in 1932.  From 1934, Warburton was employed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), where he remained until his retirement in 1965. 

Warburton's principal contribution, arising from his independent empirical research into business cycles while at the FDIC,  was in identifying erratic changes in the money supply  as the principle driver of the cycle (e.g. 1945, 1946).  He criticized Keynesian economics for "misplaced emphasis" on investment and effective demand.

Warburton contributions dried after 1953, partly as a result of the FDIC withdrawing permission for him to undertake independent research on their time.  As a result, Warburton work was already half-forgotten during the controversies of the 1960s and 1970s.  Nonetheless, Monetarists have hailed Warburton as an important anticipator of their school.

 

  

top1.gif (924 bytes)Top

Major works of Clark Warburton

  • Economic Results of Prohibition, 1932
  • "Plateaux of Prosperity and Plains of Depression", 1935, in Economic Essays in Honor of Wesley C. Mitchell
  • "Monetary Expansion and the Inflationary Gap", 1944, AER
  • "Normal Production, Income, and Employment, 1945 to 1965", 1945, Souther EJ.
  • "Monetary Theory, Full Production and the Great Depression", 1945, Econometrica
  • "The Volume of Money and the Price Level Between the World Wars", 1945, JPE
  • "Monetary Policy in the United States in World War II", 1945, AJES
  • "Business Stability and Regulation and Cost of Money", 1946, AJES
  • "Monetary Theory of Deficit Spending", 1946, REStat
  • "Monetary Control under the Federal Reserve Act", 1946, PSQ
  • "The Misplaced Emphasis in Contemporary Business-Fluctuation Theory", 1946, J of Business of Univ of Chicago
  • "Quantity and Frequency of Use of Money in the United States, 1919-45", 1946, JPE
  • "Volume of Savings, Quantity of Money and Business Instability", 1947, JPE
  • "Bank Reserves and Business Fluctuations", 1948, JASA
  • "Index Numbers of the Elements of the Equation of Exchange", 1948, Econometrica
  • "Monetary Velocity, Monetary Policy and the Rate of Interest", 1948, REStat
  • "The Secular Trend in Monetary Velocity", 1949, QJE
  • "Coordination of Monetary, Bank Supervisory and Loan Agencies of the Federal Government", 1950, J of Finance
  • "The Theory of Turning Points in Business Fluctuations", 1950, QJE
  • "The Monetary Disequilibrium Hypothesis", 1950, American J of Econ and Sociology
  • "Has Bank Supervision Been in Conflict with Monetary Policy?", 1952, REStat
  • "Monetary Difficulties and the Structure of the Monetary System", 1952, J of Finance.
  • "How Much Variation in the Quantity of Money is Needed?", 1952, Southern EJ
  • "Rules and Implements for Monetary Policy", 1953, J of Finance.
  • "Monetary Disturbances and Business Fluctuations in Two Centuries of American History", 1962, in Yeager, editor, In Search of a Monetary Constitution
  • "Maintaining Prosperity and Achieving its Equitable Distribution", 1965, Southern EJ
  • Depression, Inflation and Monetary Policy, 1966.
  • "Monetary Disequilibrium in the First Half of the Twentieth Century", 1981, HOPE

 
HET

 
top1.gif (924 bytes)Top

Resources on Clark Warburton

  • "Clark Warburton, Pioneer Monetarist" by M.D. Bordo and A.J. Schwartz, 1989, in Bordo, editor, Money, History and International Finance: Essays in honor of Anna J. Schwartz. [nber]
  • "Clark Warburton: A much overlooked monetarist pioneer" by Lars Christensen at Market Monetarist blog.
  • Guide to Clark Warburton papers at George Mason [online]
  • Wikipedia

 

 
top1.gif (924 bytes)Top
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All rights reserved, Gonçalo L. Fonseca