The Power of Economic Ideas

The Power of Economic Ideas Alex MillMow THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY E P R E S S The Power of Economic Ideas The origins of Keynesian macroeconomic management in interwar Australia 1929–39 ALEX MILLMOW THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY E P R E S S E P R E S S Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/keynes_citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Millmow, A. J. (Alex J.) Title: The power of economic ideas : the origins of Keynesian macroeconomic management in interwar Australia, 1929-1939 / Alex Millmow. ISBN: 9781921666261 (pbk.) 9781921666278 (ebook) Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Subjects: Keynesian economics. Macroeconomics--Australia. Australia--Economic conditions--1929-1939 Dewey Number: 994.042 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU E Press Cover image: Courtesy of Caroline de Maistre Walker Frontispiece: Courtesy of the Art Gallery of NSW Printed by University Printing Services, ANU This edition © 2010 ANU E Press Contents Acknowledgments . ix list of abbreviations . xi A word on the artwork . .xiii Preface . .xv 1 . The triumph of the economists? . 1 Part I. Backing into the Limelight: the Interwar Australian Economics Profession 2 . economic ideas and an assessment of Australian economists in the 1930s . .13 3 . The Australian economy during the Depression decade . .31 4 . The interwar Australian economics profession . .43 Part II. Triumph and Tribulation 5 . The Premiers’ Plan and the economists . .79 6 . The agonistes of the economists, 1931–1932 . .117 7 . The Australian recovery, 1933–1936 . .149 Part III. The March of Keynesian Ideas 8 . The Royal Commission on Monetary and Banking Systems . 193 9 . Australia, 1936–1938: the nascent Keynesian state? . 225 10 . The economics of near-war . .249 Dramatis personae . 269 Bibliography . .277 vii Acknowledgments This book, stemming from doctoral studies undertaken at The Australian National University, has been long in the making. First and foremost, I wish to thank my doctoral supervisor, Selwyn Cornish, for providing the leadership and inspiration for this path-breaking study. We have had countless meetings going through the ambition and rationale of this study. No-one could ask for a better, more considerate and, I must add, patient supervisor. When we first agreed on the scope of this study, I circulated an exploratory chapter to those with some expertise in the area: Tim Battin, William Coleman, John King, Peter Groenewegen, Evan Jones, Marjorie Harper, Sean Turnell and the late Heinz Arndt. My thanks to all of them, especially Heinz Arndt, who took a particular interest in this project and showed me his fine collection of economic literature pertaining to that period. I owe a debt of gratitude to the following archivists for consulting their collections: first, the staff at the University of Melbourne Archives. I was lucky to have unrestricted access to their collection, on D.B. Copland and L.F. Giblin and the Faculty of Commerce and Economics for the period 1925-1940. In Melbourne, too, I consulted the oft-overlooked Sir Robert Gibson Papers held at the State Library of Victoria. I would also like to thank the stockbroking firm J. B. Were and Son for giving me the privileged access to consult the business diary of Staniforth Ricketson. I also wish to thank the archivists of the ANZ collection who hold the collection on the Bank of Australasia. My gratitude extends also to the National Bank Archive that contains the L. J. McConnan collection. By far the most powerful and most interesting banker in the interwar era was Alfred Davidson and his papers and those of the Bank of New South Wales remain with the Westpac Archive. I wish to thank the Westpac archivist, Julie Gleaves, for giving me unrestricted access to the general manager’s files for the 1930s. To consult the records of the Commonwealth Bank, including its senior personnel during the interwar era, I visited the archives of the Reserve Bank of Australia in Sydney. I thank Virginia McDonald for being especially helpful in trawling through their files. I would also like to thank her counterpart at the Bank of England for guiding me through their collection on material relevant to Australia. At Cambridge University, I consulted, of course, the Keynes Papers and I wish to thank the archivist and the fellows of King’s College for the right to quote from their collection. I have made much use of the archival materials at the National Library of Australia and I would like to thank the chief archivist for his advice in uncovering troves of literary treasure. Within the parliamentary vicinity there is the National Archives of Australia, where I trawled through the ix The Power of economic ideas Federal Treasury files. I would also like to thank the archivists at the University of Tasmania, the University of Sydney and the University of Queensland for allowing me to read the archives of certain economists of the interwar era. I would also like to thank Tony Endres, Geoff Harcourt and Sean Turnell for their comments, encouragement and advice on this study. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, David and Nancy, for putting up with their son who never really left university. I dedicate this book to them and to my beautiful wife, Amanda, with much love and appreciation. x Lists of abbreviations AA National Archives of Australia BE Bank of England Archives BNSW Bank of New South Wales, now Westpac, Archive CPD Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates KPKC Keynes Papers, King’s College, Modern Archives Centre NLA Manuscript collection, National Library of Australia PRO Public Records Office, London RBA Papers of governors and senior personnel at the Reserve Bank of Australia SMH Sydney Morning Herald UMA FECC Faculty of Economics and Commerce, University of Melbourne Archives UT University of Tasmania xi A word on the artwork Thematic to this book, both the sketch and the watercolour of J. M. Keynes were undertaken by the Australian-born artist Roy de Maistre. He spent a good part of his career working in London. The sketch appears courtesy of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The watercolour, inspired by the sketch, appears courtesy of Caroline de Maistre Walker and the Castlemaine Art Gallery. In 1964 Roy De Maistre was commissioned by the National Mutual Life Assurance Society to undertake a posthumous portrait of Keynes to commemorate the economist’s stint as chairman during the interwar years. De Maistre used the famous David Low cartoon of Keynes reclining in an armchair as well as photographs to recapture Keynes in a characteristic impish mood. The artist was ‘happy’ with his rendering of Keynes (Johnson 1995). xiii Preface This book focuses on the transformation in Australian economists’ thought and ideas during the period 1929–39. In a decade marked by depression, recovery and international political turbulence, Australian economists moved from a classical orthodox economic position to that of a cautious Keynesianism by 1939. In the international literature on the diffusion of Keynesian economics, there has been little recognition of just how extensive the prewar conversion of Australian economists actually was. That advance in theoretical insight was channelled into policy. Since its inception, the Australian economic profession has always been a publicly focused one. This book looks at how economists tried to influence policymaking in the 1930s. Having devised a unique macroeconomic stabilisation package in 1931, economists felt obliged to seek changes to the parameters as economic conditions altered but, more importantly, as their insights about economic management changed. This aspect requires an insight of the interplay between economic ideas, players and policy. This approach aids our primary thesis by teasing out the growing divide between the perspectives of economists and that of policymakers. There are three related themes that underscore this study. First, the professionalisation of Australian economics took a gigantic leap in this period, aided in part by the adverse circumstances confronting the economy but also by the aspirations economists held for their discipline. This necessitates looking at the activities of the economists through the 1930s as they tried to enlighten preconceived economic ideas and conventions among policymakers. A second theme relates to the rather unflattering reputation foisted on interwar economists after 1945. A consensus was formed that their anti-depression advice was unfortunate, inappropriate and mistimed. This view will be strongly contested by showing how, in fact, Australian economists moved quickly and radically away from the analytical framework that underpinned their earlier advice. That transition underlies a third theme of this book—namely, that Australian economists were emboldened by John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory to confidently push for greater management of economic activity than hitherto. By 1939, and perhaps earlier, Australian economists conceptualised from a new theoretical framework, from which they advanced comment and policy advice. When the committee that advised P. C. Spender was first appointed in 1939, xv The Power of economic ideas it drew one economist, E. R. Walker, to proclaim that ‘[t]he value of economic science was at last recognised’ (cited in Brown 1994:93). This book therefore will rehabilitate the works of Australian interwar economists, arguing that they not only had an enviable international reputation but facilitated the acceptance of Keynes’s General Theory among policymakers before most of their counterparts in the northern hemisphere. xvi 1. The triumph of the economists? In 1981, Colin Clark wrote to the Cambridge economist Joan Robinson suggesting that he had found a telling insight into J.

Load more