Variety of Opinion and the Speculative Demand for Money: An Analysis in Terms of Fuzzy Concepts

The purpose of the paper is to explore the potential for applying fuzzy logic to economic decision-making under Keynesian uncertainty, and in particular to circumstances where variety of opinion is important. Fuzzy logic is shown to apply where expectations may differ because the nature of the subject matter impedes any ‘crisp’ way of describing the underlying variables. The particular case of the speculative demand for money is considered, since it explicitly reflects variety of opinion as to whether interest rates are ‘high’ or ‘low’. We also explore the potential application of the concept to monetary policy-making.