Treasury view and post-WWI British austerity: Basil Blackett, Otto Niemeyer and Ralph Hawtrey
研究一战后英国紧缩政策的智识和历史起源，通过分析三位财政部官员的观点，揭示紧缩政策的货币与财政形式及其与当代政策的关联。
The 2016 special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics places austerity mainly in the context of a neo-liberal reaction to Keynesianism.1 However, the British 'Treasury view' of the 1920s on the crowding-out effects of public expenditure is recognized as a chief forerunner of contemporary austerity policies (Blyth, 2013; Bridel, 2014; Konzelmann, 2014). What light can a study of austerity after the First World War cast on the nature of contemporary policies? This article expands upon austerity's intellectual and historical origins, unraveling neglected analytic connections. Most scholars focus on fiscal austerity, which may be defined as cuts in public expenditure and the public payroll, increases in (mostly regressive) taxation, privatization and reductions in budget deficits. Its purpose is to increase investors' confidence in a government's ability to manage its finances (Konzelmann, 2014, p. xiv), implying that austerity is usually a response to actual or anticipated economic crisis. Austerity's monetary form is considered by fewer scholars; Blyth (2013, p. 2) defines it as a 'form of voluntary deflation'.2 Monetary austerity may reinforce fiscal austerity by constraining a government's ability to finance its spending with money creation. Since the 2008 Crisis, fiscal austerity has predominated in Europe. However, after the First World War both forms of austerity were put into practice in most European countries. Great Britain led the way.