I haven't had much access to the internet lately, but when I saw this I decided to float it here:

R.G. Hawtrey has perhaps the most famous "pure money" theory which he outlined in a barrage of articles and books (1913, 1926, 1928, 1933, 1937). His theory, as noted, is Wicksellian in many respects. But his chief characters are wholesalers and middlemen who rely unduly on bank credit and are thus highly sensitive to interest rates. Any slight injection of money which lowers the money rate of interest induces these middlemen to increase inventories. They do so by borrowing from banks increases and demanding increases in production from firms. But because increasing production takes time, the money supply of the economy is momentarily too large for the given amount of income (think of a Cambridge cash-balance theory). This "unspent margin" leads to higher demand for goods by consumers - but that extra demand will itself lower the inventories of these middlemen. Realizing their falling inventories, they will then call again upon firms to step up production and borrow money to do so. But again that leads to an excess supply of money, etc.

The turning points in the Hawtrey cycle arise when production (and thus income) finally catches up with the higher money supplies. They will catch up, Hawtrey tells us, because banks will begin to close off credit when they see their reserves being stretched too far. Then we jump into the recession: when banks stop lending to middlemen, these will reduce their demands on firms. Production will slow down and so will incomes - but with a lag again. The fall in money supply comes first and so consumers now have excess demand for money and will thus lower their demand for goods. That leads to inventory build up and a further demand by middlemen that production reduce further. The downturn continues until the banks are flushed with money once again and need to lend out. http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/essays...moneycycle.htm

I thought it was interesting to see a business cycle theory somewhat similar to the Austrian one. The major difference, as I see it, is that Hawtrey's explanation would call for some kind of regulatory central bank that would stabilize the reserves of subsidiary banks, while ABCT calls for overall low monetary expansion (usually coupled with decentralization) as to not distort the preferences of consumers.

Thoughts? Comments?