This volume is a collection of intellectual biographies of economists, which the author has written over the last 16 years. There are four categories: accounts of Cambridge greats - Joan Robinson, Piero Sraffa, Nicholas Kaldor, Richard Kahn; oral histories of Lorie Tarshis, George Shackle, Kenneth Boulding and Richard Goodwin; memoirs of close friends of the author who have died; and shorter essays which include John Hicks, James Meade, Brian Reddaway, Arthur Smithies, Heinz Arndt and J.M.Keynes.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An “outstanding new intellectual biography of John Maynard Keynes [that moves] swiftly along currents of lucidity and wit” (The New York Times), illuminating the world of the influential economist and his transformative ideas “A timely, lucid and compelling portrait of a man whose enduring relevance is always heightened when crisis strikes.”—The Wall Street Journal WINNER: The Arthur Ross Book Award Gold Medal • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism FINALIST: The National Book Critics Circle Award • The Sabew Best in Business Book Award NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • The Economist • Bloomberg • Mother Jones At the dawn of World War I, a young academic named John Maynard Keynes hastily folded his long legs into the sidecar of his brother-in-law’s motorcycle for an odd, frantic journey that would change the course of history. Swept away from his placid home at Cambridge University by the currents of the conflict, Keynes found himself thrust into the halls of European treasuries to arrange emergency loans and packed off to America to negotiate the terms of economic combat. The terror and anxiety unleashed by the war would transform him from a comfortable obscurity into the most influential and controversial intellectual of his day—a man whose ideas still retain the power to shock in our own time. Keynes was not only an economist but the preeminent anti-authoritarian thinker of the twentieth century, one who devoted his life to the belief that art and ideas could conquer war and deprivation. As a moral philosopher, political theorist, and statesman, Keynes led an extraordinary life that took him from intimate turn-of-the-century parties in London’s riotous Bloomsbury art scene to the fevered negotiations in Paris that shaped the Treaty of Versailles, from stock market crashes on two continents to diplomatic breakthroughs in the mountains of New Hampshire to wartime ballet openings at London’s extravagant Covent Garden. Along the way, Keynes reinvented Enlightenment liberalism to meet the harrowing crises of the twentieth century. In the United States, his ideas became the foundation of a burgeoning economics profession, but they also became a flash point in the broader political struggle of the Cold War, as Keynesian acolytes faced off against conservatives in an intellectual battle for the future of the country—and the world. Though many Keynesian ideas survived the struggle, much of the project to which he devoted his life was lost. In this riveting biography, veteran journalist Zachary D. Carter unearths the lost legacy of one of history’s most fascinating minds. The Price of Peace revives a forgotten set of ideas about democracy, money, and the good life with transformative implications for today’s debates over inequality and the power politics that shape the global order. LONGLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE
Joseph Halevi, G. C. Harcourt, Peter Kriesler and J. W. Nevile bring together a collection of their most influential papers on post-Keynesian thought. Their work stresses the importance of the underlying institutional framework, of the economy as a historical process and, therefore, of path determinacy. In addition, their essays suggest the ultimate goal of economics is as a tool to inform policy and make the world a better place, with better being defined by an overriding concern with social justice. Volume III explores the ethics of economics.
The Making of a Post-Keynesian Economist: Cambridge Harvest gathers up the threads of the last decade of the author's twenty eight years in Cambridge, before his return to Australia. The essays include autobiography, theory, review articles, surveys, policy, intellectual biographies and tributes, and general essays.
“I defy anybody—Keynesian, Hayekian, or uncommitted—to read [Wapshott’s] work and not learn something new.”—John Cassidy, The New Yorker As the stock market crash of 1929 plunged the world into turmoil, two men emerged with competing claims on how to restore balance to economies gone awry. John Maynard Keynes, the mercurial Cambridge economist, believed that government had a duty to spend when others would not. He met his opposite in a little-known Austrian economics professor, Freidrich Hayek, who considered attempts to intervene both pointless and potentially dangerous. The battle lines thus drawn, Keynesian economics would dominate for decades and coincide with an era of unprecedented prosperity, but conservative economists and political leaders would eventually embrace and execute Hayek's contrary vision. From their first face-to-face encounter to the heated arguments between their ardent disciples, Nicholas Wapshott here unearths the contemporary relevance of Keynes and Hayek, as present-day arguments over the virtues of the free market and government intervention rage with the same ferocity as they did in the 1930s.
John Maynard Keynes, then a rising young economist, participated in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as chief representative of the British Treasury and advisor to Prime Minister David Lloyd George. He resigned after desperately trying and failing to reduce the huge demands for reparations being made on Germany. The Economic Consequences of the Peace is Keynes' brilliant and prophetic analysis of the effects that the peace treaty would have both on Germany and, even more fatefully, the world.
This is a major contribution to post-Keynesian thought. With studies of the key pioneers - Keynes himself, Kalecki, Kahn, Goodwin, Kaldor, Joan Robinson, Sraffa and Pasinetti - G. C. Harcourt emphasizes their positive contributions to theories of distribution, pricing, accumulation, endogenous money and growth. The propositions of earlier chapters are brought together in an integrated narrative and interpretation of the major episodes in advanced capitalist economics in the post-war period, leading to a discussion of the relevance of post-Keynesian ideas to both our understanding of economics and to policy-making. The appendices include biographical sketches of the pioneers and analysis of the conceptual core of their discontent with orthodox theories. Drawing on the author's experience of teaching and researching over fifty years, this book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students interested in alternative approaches to theoretical, applied and policy issues in economics, as well as to teachers and researchers in economics.
While the first conference (1993) focused on methodological issues, the 13 papers of the second are more concerned with developments in theory, empirical work, and policy questions as they seek to carry on the insights of economist John Maynard Keynes into and through the 1990s. Among the themes are the relationship between microeconomic and macroeconomic levels, uncertainty and its implications for individual behavior as it underpins macroeconomic behavior, and applying post- Keynesian theory to policy questions particularly in the international arena. The proceedings of the first conference were published under a separate title, and this series begins Volume One with the second conference. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This two volume Handbook contains chapters on the main areas to which Post-Keynesians have made sustained and important contributions. These include theories of accumulation, distribution, pricing, money and finance, international trade and capital flows, the environment, methodological issues, criticism of mainstream economics and Post-Keynesian policies. The Introduction outlines what is in the two volumes, in the process placing Post-Keynesian procedures and contributions in appropriate contexts.
These two volumes cover the principal areas to which Post-Keynesian economists have made distinctive contributions. The contents include the significant criticism by Post-Keynesians of mainstream economics, but the emphasis is on positive Post-Keynesian analysis of the economic problems of the modern world and of policies with which to tackle them.
