This book examines the much-debated question of whether John Maynard Keynes' greatest work—The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money—was an instance of Mertonian simultaneous scientific discovery. In part I of this study, Don Patinkin argues for Keynes' originality, rejecting the claims of the Stockholm school and the Polish economist Michal Kalecki. Patinkin shows that the theoretical problems to which the Stockholm school and Kalecki devoted their attention largely differed from those of the General Theory and that, even when the problem addressed was similar, the treatment they accorded it was not part of their central messages. In the remaining parts of the book Patinkin presents a critique of Keynes' theory of effective demand and discusses Keynes' monetary theory and policy thinking, as well as the relationship between the respective developments of Keynesian theory and national income accounting in the 1930s.
This second volume contains essays which relate to developments in Keynes' scholarship and theorizing in the years since his death and demonstrates the ongoing validity of the Keynesian tradition.
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.
This volume, a collection of essays by internationally known experts in the area of the history of economic thought and of the economics of Keynes and macroeconomics in particular, is designed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the publication of The General Theory. The essays contained in this volume are divided into four sections. The first section contains three essays that explore the concept of fundamental uncertainty and its unique role in The General Theory. The second section contains five essays that examine the place of The General Theory in the history of macroeconomics since 1936. The third section contains three essays that explore the interrelationships among Keynes, Friedman, Kaldor, Marx and Sraffa and their approaches to macroeconomic theory and policy. The final section contains four essays that provide several new interpretations of The General Theory and its position within macroeconomics. Keynes's General Theory is intended for those students and scholars who are interested in the economics of Keynes and the rich variety of approaches to macroeconomic theory and policy.
Keynes is universally acknowledged as both the greatest and the most influential economist of the twentieth century. These volumes complement the project of the earlier volumes, making available 150 additional articles
Various explanations have been put forward as to why the Keynesian Revolution in economics in the 1930s and 1940s took place. Some of these point to the temporal relevance of John Maynard Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), appearing, as it did, just a handful of years after the onset of the Great Depression, whilst others highlight the importance of more anecdotal evidence, such as Keynes’s close relations with the Cambridge ‘Circus’, a group of able, young Cambridge economists who dissected and assisted Keynes in developing crucial ideas in the years leading up to the General Theory. However, no systematic effort has been made to bring together these and other factors to examine them from a sociology of science perspective. This book fills this gap by taking its cue from a well-established tradition of work from history of science studies devoted to identifying the intellectual, technical, institutional, psychological and financial factors which help to explain why certain research schools are successful and why others fail. This approach, it turns out, provides a coherent account of why the revolution in macroeconomics was ‘Keynesian’ and why, on a related note, Keynes was able to see off contemporary competitor theorists, notably Friedrich von Hayek and Michal Kalecki.
ÔAt a time of renewed interest in Keynes, this volume provides an illuminating and forward-looking collection of papers. They explain the meaning of KeynesÕs great contribution and also show how that contribution can be developed further for application to modern economic policy issues. Most important, the papers explain the ways in which KeynesÕs methodological approach is so different from that which continues to dominate mainstream economics and how productive it would be if that approach were applied to our modern experience.Õ Ð Sheila Dow, University of Stirling, UK ÔThis book celebrates the 75th anniversary of KeynesÕs General Theory, which has proved yet again to be an endless source of inspiration. These authors take The General Theory as a point of departure from which to address the problems of today from fresh perspectives. This volume is indeed Keynes for today Ð and tomorrow.Õ Ð Victoria Chick, University College London, UK ÔKeynesÕs General Theory for Today is a fine set of thoughtful and highly relevant essays. They relate several ideas of Keynes to todayÕs happenings, putting forward modifications and extensions to take into account both short-term and long-term happenings in advanced capitalist economies. Especially useful are the investigations of KeynesÕs revolutionary methods of reasoning in economics, long abandoned by orthodox economists, to the great detriment of our understanding of what is happening and what may be done about it. These essays should be required reading for students, teachers and policy makers alike.Õ Ð G.C. Harcourt, University of New South Wales, Australia The themes of this important new volume were chosen to mark the 75th anniversary of the publication of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. The distinguished authors concentrate on the relevance of this seminal publication for macroeconomic theory, method and the politics of today. This is particularly pertinent as similarities with the 1930s are striking in terms of unemployment, low growth, financial fragility and the European monetary union resembling the gold standard. Illustrating new ways of understanding the importance of uncertainty in macroeconomics, particularly in view of the importance of finance and balance of payments imbalances within a monetary union, this book will prove a stimulating and challenging read for academics, researchers and students of macroeconomics, heterodox economics, and the methodology and history of economic thought.
