ABSTRACT Economist and entrepreneur Silvio Gesell was the legitimate creator of the subject of macroeconomics as an autonomous discipline, the driving force behind the abandonment of the fixed and rigid gold standard in Argentina (which was in force until 1899) as well as a legislative reform package known as the “Tornquinian Reform.” That reform in monetary theory replaced the “theory of value” with the “theory of prices” and promoted the use of a general price index as a substitute for the previous gold‐based system of measuring prices. This reform led to international awareness of Gesell's economic theories due to their great success in Argentina. His ideas were also the foundation of subsequent Keynesian economic theory, the basis for economic development in the 20th century throughout the world to the present day. The innovation and technical modernization of Gesell's analysis played a key role in the reform of the international monetary system through its influence on J. M. Keynes' BANCOR proposal which was based on Gesell's IVA model. Other key concepts pioneered by Gesell were the use of negative interest rates and stabilizing monetary velocity to eliminate speculative, financial, and economic bubbles and to transform economic development into a stable and predictable process. After having been ignored for decades, Gesell's impact is becoming a subject of widespread study in recent years.
Carlos Fernando Louge (Tue,) studied this question.