This reassessment of J. M. Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest andMoney results from the author's experience in using Keynes's book as the core of her macroeconomicscourses for undergraduates. It is intended to encourage others to bring the General Theory back intomainstream teaching, because it "gives a far richer understanding of the structure of macroeconomicinteractions and methods of analysing them than much of what has been written since."Victoria Chickis Lecturer in Economics at University College, London.
This book was originally published by Macmillan in 1936. It was voted the top Academic Book that Shaped Modern Britain by Academic Book Week (UK) in 2017, and in 2011 was placed on Time Magazine's top 100 non-fiction books written in English since 1923. Reissued with a fresh Introduction by the Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman and a new Afterword by Keynes’ biographer Robert Skidelsky, this important work is made available to a new generation. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money transformed economics and changed the face of modern macroeconomics. Keynes’ argument is based on the idea that the level of employment is not determined by the price of labour, but by the spending of money. It gave way to an entirely new approach where employment, inflation and the market economy are concerned. Highly provocative at its time of publication, this book and Keynes’ theories continue to remain the subject of much support and praise, criticism and debate. Economists at any stage in their career will enjoy revisiting this treatise and observing the relevance of Keynes’ work in today’s contemporary climate.
Back to the future: a heterodox economist rewrites Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money to serve as the basis for a macroeconomics for the twenty-first century. John Maynard Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money was the most influential economic idea of the twentieth century. But, argues Stephen Marglin, its radical implications were obscured by Keynes's lack of the mathematical tools necessary to argue convincingly that the problem was the market itself, as distinct from myriad sources of friction around its margins. Marglin fills in the theoretical gaps, revealing the deeper meaning of the General Theory. Drawing on eight decades of discussion and debate since the General Theory was published, as well as on his own research, Marglin substantiates Keynes's intuition that there is no mechanism within a capitalist economy that ensures full employment. Even if deregulating the economy could make it more like the textbook ideal of perfect competition, this would not address the problem that Keynes identified: the potential inadequacy of aggregate demand. Ordinary citizens have paid a steep price for the distortion of Keynes's message. Fiscal policy has been relegated to emergencies like the Great Recession. Monetary policy has focused unduly on inflation. In both cases the underlying rationale is the false premise that in the long run at least the economy is self-regulating so that fiscal policy is unnecessary and inflation beyond a modest 2 percent serves no useful purpose. Fleshing out Keynes's intuition that the problem is not the warts on the body of capitalism but capitalism itself, Raising Keynes provides the foundation for a twenty-first-century macroeconomics that can both respond to crises and guide long-run policy.
Since the publication of Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936, macroeconomic theory has altered considerably. Each author in this volume focuses on an issue which either preceded, accompanied or followed the 'Keynesian Revolution' and helped to shape economics in subsequent years. Contributors reconsider some of the major concepts of the "General Theory": unemployment and the identity of income and output. They also highlight some of the controversies in macroeconomic theory and review the macroeconomic policy implications and consequences.
This reassessment of J. M. Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money results from the author's experience in using Keynes's book as the core of her macroeconomics courses for undergraduates. It is intended to encourage others to bring the General Theory back into mainstream teaching, because it "gives a far richer understanding of the structure of macroeconomic interactions and methods of analysing them than much of what has been written since."Victoria Chick is Lecturer in Economics at University College, London.
This book argues that Keynesian economists have betrayed Keynes' theory and policy conclusions, and that the world has been misled about those policies. Keynesians have focused attention on policies for dealing with effects of economic failure as they arise, whereas Keynes was concerned with the cause and then the prevention of economic failure.
This book provides a comprehensive overview of Keynes’ contributions to macroeconomics and offers an in-depth analysis of the contested legacy of The General Theory, a book that marked the emergence of modern macroeconomics from the earlier heritage of monetary theory and business cycle and analysis.
Both Keynes’s General Theory and orthodox economics seek to understand how competitive markets work, but they diverge sharply with respect to the nature and properties of the competitive equilibrium. The reason, as Keynes himself pointed out, is that the General Theory recognises that the future consequences of current decisions are fundamentally uncertain which, contra the orthodox view, radically affects decision-making and the functioning of markets. This book approaches macroeconomics on the basis of the General Theory, of which a new exposition is offered in the first part, purged of the grey areas that resulted from the context in which it was written, and of the considerable confusion generated for almost a century by the vain attempts of orthodox thinking to integrate such novel ideas in its deficient conceptual framework. The second part aims at extending the conceptual framework to the open economy and considering how uncertainty affects international linkages. The third part proposes an integrated conceptual and formal framework for analysing how changes in the national and international context, including macroeconomic policies, affect an economy. This new examination of General Theory is a major addition to the literature on Keynes, macroeconomics, economic theory and the history of economic thought.
"Both Keynes's General Theory and orthodox economics seek to understand how competitive markets work, but they diverge sharply with respect to the nature and properties of the competitive equilibrium. The reason, as Keynes himself pointed out, is that the General Theory recognizes that the future consequences of current decisions are fundamentally uncertain which, contra the orthodox view, radically affects decision-making and the functioning of markets. This book approaches macroeconomics on the basis of the General Theory, of which a new exposition is offered in the first part, purged of the grey areas that resulted from the context in which it was written, and of the considerable confusion generated for almost a century by the vain attempts of orthodox thinking to integrate such novel ideas in its deficient conceptual framework. The second part aims at extending the conceptual framework to the open economy and considering how uncertainty affects international linkages. The third part proposes an integrated conceptual and formal framework for analysing how changes in the national and international context, including macroeconomic policies, affect an economy. This new examination of General Theory is a major addition to the literature on Keynes, macroeconomics, economic theory and the history of economic thought"--
This book is devoted to the lasting impact of The General Theory (and Keynes’s thought) on macroeconomic theory, methodology and its relevance for understanding the post-crisis challenges of the 21st Century. A number of contributions take their departure from Keynes's presentation during the 1930's of his new macroeconomic understanding and its policy implications. Other chapters take a more pluralistic view of Keynes's ideas and their importance for contemporary debates. Further, it is demonstrated that many textbooks often misrepresent The General Theory and therefore cannot be a reliable guide to 21st Century economic policy.
