ABSTRACT

In relation to money, the distinction between a permanent and a temporary phenomenon appears in Ricardo with two different meanings. The first was borrowed from common language: something is permanent if it lasts for a long time, as opposed to something temporary which does not. Permanent is then synonymous with durable, and temporary with provisional. A second meaning — more analytical — of the distinction between "permanent" and "temporary". According to Marcuzzo, Ricardo's use of the word "permanent" may be related to the existence of a market mechanism, in contrast with the time dimension usually ascribed to it. Keynes called the "own-rate of interest" of a capital-asset was simply a marginal efficiency of capital, not a commodity-rate of interest. "The essential properties of interest and money," where, as is well known, Keynes studies the adjustment process that generates the equilibrium level of the production of all capital-assets for a given money-rate of interest.