I’ve read that the Romans did not have a clear cut understanding of economics and concepts of national debt and inflation- hence the vain attempts at restoring the economy by way of decreasing the amount of gold and silver in their currency. During the Late Empire (the autocracy), how was this idea of altering currency pitched to, say, the emperor? With no formal understanding of classical economics, how was this altered currency idea disseminated and popularized? Who “figured” that it was a good idea? My sources make it seem as though it was the emperor’s (Diocletian, Constantine) idea- but I figured that the emperor simply put the plan in motion. Who did it start with- and how much of a task was it to convince the emperor to actually push the envelope ?
hence the vain attempts at restoring the economy by way of decreasing the amount of gold and silver in their currency.
The issue of debasement isn't so much based on long term plans on monetary policy, they were immediate solutions to dealing with sudden shortfalls such as the need of money to pay for urgently needed items such as salaries for soldiers.
In effect inflation was the substitute for a system of sovereign debt and a bond market because debasement in effect "borrows" by pushing actual cost of an action to the future. It was also the consequence of the inflexible Roman tax system which often did not adjust tax rates in accordance with either the fiscal need of the state nor the negative effect it was having on long term income by driving peasant off their land through overtaxation.
Note that debasement isn't a necessarily a bad thing, the ability to borrow from the future meant that collapse was staved off until a later period which gave the empire breathing space to attempt a recovery.