1. Professor J. C. Weldon supervised my McGill thesis, submitted in the summer of 1968 as ‘On the Theory and Measurement of Capital’ and subsequently published as On Concepts of Capital and Technical Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). He ran faculty seminars on monetary theory which I attended while a visiting lecturer at McGill from 1972 to 1975. The seminars, led by Weldon with brilliance and wit, were a great delight, where the freest and sharpest exchange of scholarly views could occur without being accompanied by the vicissitudes which sometime mar academic life. This chapter is written, then, in memory of Jack Weldon, the scholarly guidance he provided, and the monetary seminars he led at McGill. I am grateful for comments on an earlier draft by Jack Galbraith, John Smithin and the editors of this volume.
2. His first work was published as ‘Theoretical Penalties of Inflation’, eds N. Swan and D. Wilton, Inflation and the Canadian Experience (Kingston: Industrial Relations Centre at Queen’s University, 1971) [Weldon, 1971]. The second was ‘On Money as a Public Good’ (McGill University, mimeo 2 June 1973), a paper presented to 1973 meetings of the Canadian Economics Association [Weldon, 1973]. In the second paper, Professor Weldon allowed as how it was the third version of the theme, the first ‘tentatively offered to a seminar at Carleton, in 1968 I think’. Alas, there is no trace of Weldon giving the seminar at Carleton nor of the paper he gave at the time.
3. Peter Howitt, ‘Optimum Quantity of Money’, The New Palgrave Dictionary, III (London: Mcmillan, 1987).
4. David Laidler, ‘The Welfare Cost of Inflation in Neoclassical Theory — some unsettled problems’ ed. E. Lundberg, Inflation Theory and Anti-Inflation Policy (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1977). Professor Laidler has returned recently to the problem. See D. Laidler, ‘Taking Money Seriously’, Canadian Journal of Economics, 21 (November 1988) pp. 687–713, and ‘Monetarism, Microfoundations and the Theory of Monetary Policy’, University of Western Ontario Working Paper 8807C.
5. See Weldon, 1973, pp. 12–13, especially footnote 24, and, in particular, his discussion with Professor Robert Mundell in the section on interest-yielding money in ‘Inflation, Saving, and the Real Rate of Interest’, in Mundell’s Monetary Theory (Pacific Palisades: Goodyear Publishing Company, 1971).