The method of circulation analysis … involves a minimum of description and classification, a maximum of interconnections and functional relations. … Analytic thinking uses classes based on similarity only as a springboard to reach terms defined by the correlations in which they stand. [CWL 21, 111]
… the introduction of the notion of the monetary function… takes a further step towards defining a circulation of money……..not a rotational movement……. rather a circular series of relationships of dependence of some flows of payments on other flows. Money moves only at the instant of payment or transfer. Most of the time it is quiescent. … it may also be dynamically quiescent, and then it is held in reserve for some definite purpose. … Money held in reserve for a defined purpose will be said to be in a monetary function. Five such functions are distinguished: basic demand, basic supply, surplus demand, surplus supply, and a fifth redistributive function. (CWL 15, 48)…….
Volume 15 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan is entitled Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis. Lonergan analyzes and explains the economic process as a circulatory process; that is, as a dynamic organic process of interdependent circulatory flows of goods and services and their functionally-congruent payments. It is to be understood and verified as a coherent set of flows implicitly-defined by their functional relations to one another. Continue reading →