Business Cycle Analysis in Talmudic Literature

Abstract

Seeks to demonstrate that the Talmudic scholars possessed theoretical knowledge and practical experience regarding the market phenomenon of business disturbances, recognizing the existence of a causal relationship between the physical determinants of the cycles of the weather patterns and the fortunes of the agricultural sector, a condition which affected the economy as a whole. Discusses this linkage with respect to the insights in Johanan′s works. These come close to Hawtrey′s view of the business cycle as a monetary phenomenon, on the one hand, and Samuelson′s discussion of “supply shock” as a result of “...droughts and crop failures in agriculture”, on the other. Johanan also recognized the existence of a quantitativerelationship between money and prices, and prices and incomes. This suggests that the Talmudic scholars had come to appreciate the fundamentals of what was later to emerge as the quantity theory of money.

Citation

Ohrenstein, R.A. (1993), "Business Cycle Analysis in Talmudic Literature", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 40-50. https://doi.org/10.1108/03068299310023932