Austrian Economics and the Mainstream: View from the Boundary
Volume 3, No. 2 (Summer 2000)
Economic science, as handed down to us from Menger and Mises, explains observed human behavior by referring to other features of the real world. Both the phenomenon to be explained and the explanation itself are thus strictly realistic—a charm and advantage of the Menger-Mises approach as compared to other approaches.
According to mainstream economics, the validity of various definitions of money can be ascertained by means of a statistical test. What determines whether money M1, M2, and the other Ms are valid definitions is how well they correlate with national income. Most economists hold that, since the early 1980s, correlations between various definitions of money and national income have broken down. The reason for this breakdown, it is held, is that financial deregulation has made the demand for money unstable.