Collects 32 essays which trace the development of economic thought in the wake of the Keynesian revolution. Eisner (emeritus, economics, Northwestern U.) provides a rigorous analysis of the permanent income hypothesis, the multiplier, interest rates, the liquidity trap, consumption and saving, depreciation, unemployment, and growth models. He also offers new measures of saving, investment, and national income which provide new insights into the economic factors affecting current welfare and future growth. He concludes with an essay which rejects the concept of a NAIRU or "natural non-accelerating- inflation rate of unemployment." Appends a complete list of the author's publications. No subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This book considers the cultural legacy of the Keynesian Revolution in economics. It assesses the impact of Keynes and Keynesian thinking upon economics and policy, as well as the response of the Chicago and Austrian schools, and the legacy of all three in shaping economic life. The book is a call to restore economics to its roots in moral and cultural knowledge, reminding us that human beings are more than consumers. The Keynesian Revolution taught us that we should be happy if we are prosperous, but instead we feel hollow and morally anxious – our economy feels empty. Drawing on paradigms from earlier historical periods while affirming modern market systems, this book encourages a return to a view of human beings as persons with the right and responsibility to discover, and do, the things in life that are intrinsically good and enduring. Because in the long run, the legacy of our choices will continue long after “we’re all dead.”
This study examines the pioneering economic work by John Maynard Keynes, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money", and attempts to explain, with constant reference to the original sources, the complexity of Keynes' theories and the critical response they evoked.
The name of John Maynard Keynes is still the focus of political and economic controversy, and in the course of it, "what Keynes really meant" has suffered much distortion. This book represents a quest for the historical Keynes. It follows the story of an argument which arose out of the performance of the British economy in the period of depression between the wars and provides an account of Keynes's thinking in the years that led up to the General Theory, making it comprehensible to specialists and non-specialists alike.
This chapter discusses various past and future aspects of the global economy. There has been a huge transformation of the global economy in the last several years. Articles on the future of energy in the global economy by Jeffrey Ball and on measuring inequality by Jonathan Ostry and Andrew Berg are also illustrated. Since the 2008 global crisis, global economists must change the way they look at the world.
The book is well researched and clearly written, and is a valuable account of the evolution of Keynes s ideas in the period under review. I recommend The Origins of the Keynesian Revolution as a scholarly study of the evolution of an important aspect of macroeconomics. Athol Fitzgibbons, Australian Economic History Review This is a very good treatment, adding to a growing literature on the development of John Maynard Keynes s monetary theory as it progressed from the Tract through the Treatise to the General Theory. Professor Dimand has given us a very good account of all this. His book should be used not only in history of thought courses but also in macro and money courses as an antidote, if nothing else, to the extremely limited view of Keynesian economics which most textbooks provide. Thomas K. Rymes, Journal of the History of Economic Thought Robert Dimand has written a superb book. . . . It is appropriate for use in classes on the history of economic thought and will serve as a nice supplement in a macroeconomics course. It would be perfect in a seminar on the development of Keynes s thought. Indeed, it would not be surprising if more of such courses were taught as a result of the publication of this excellent little book. Bruce J. Caldwell, Review of Political Economy This book traces an important and exciting chapter in the history of economic thought, with painstaking documentation from old sources and from previously unexploited, unpublished material. It does this with a sure and mature understanding of the intellectual and theoretical issues. Dimand is an excellent theorist himself. The book is beautifully and clearly written. James Tobin, Yale University, US Dimand s book will stimulate much discussion. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the development of monetary and macroeconomic theory during the 1920s and 1960s. Robert Stanley Herren, Journal of Economic History Robert Dimand has written an excellent study of the evolution of J.M. Keynes s economic thought from its origins in orthodox Cambridge monetary theory through its early 1930s development leading to the General Theory. John B. Davis, Review of Social Economy
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money The "Keynesian Revolution" Complete EditionBy John Maynard Keynes The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was written by the English economist John Maynard Keynes. The book, generally considered to be his magnum opus, is largely credited with creating the terminology and shape of modern macroeconomics. Published in February 1936, it sought to bring about a revolution, commonly referred to as the "Keynesian Revolution", in the way economists thought - especially in relation to the proposition that a market economy tends naturally to restore itself to full employment after temporary shocks. Regarded widely as the cornerstone of Keynesian thought, the book challenged the established classical economics and introduced important concepts such as the consumption function, the multiplier, the marginal efficiency of capital, the principle of effective demand and liquidity preference. The central argument of The General Theory is that the level of employment is determined, not by the price of labour as in neoclassical economics, but by the spending of money (aggregate demand). Keynes argues that it is wrong to assume that competitive markets will, in the long run, deliver full employment or that full employment is the natural, self-righting, equilibrium state of a monetary economy. On the contrary, under-employment and under-investment are likely to be the natural state unless active measures are taken. One implication of The General Theory is that a lack of competition is not the fundamental problem and measures to reduce unemployment by cutting wages or benefits are not only hard-hearted but ultimately futile.
The Great Recession of 2008 restored John Maynard Keynes to prominence. After decades when the Keynesian revolution seemed to have been forgotten, the great British theorist was suddenly everywhere. The New York Times asked, “What would Keynes have done?” The Financial Times wrote of “the undeniable shift to Keynes.” Le Monde pronounced the economic collapse Keynes’s “revenge.” Two years later, following bank bailouts and Tea Party fundamentalism, Keynesian principles once again seemed misguided or irrelevant to a public focused on ballooning budget deficits. In this readable account, Backhouse and Bateman elaborate the misinformation and caricature that have led to Keynes’s repeated resurrection and interment since his death in 1946. Keynes’s engagement with social and moral philosophy and his membership in the Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers helped to shape his manner of theorizing. Though trained as a mathematician, he designed models based on how specific kinds of people (such as investors and consumers) actually behave—an approach that runs counter to the idealized agents favored by economists at the end of the century. Keynes wanted to create a revolution in the way the world thought about economic problems, but he was more open-minded about capitalism than is commonly believed. He saw capitalism as essential to a society’s well-being but also morally flawed, and he sought a corrective for its main defect: the failure to stabilize investment. Keynes’s nuanced views, the authors suggest, offer an alternative to the polarized rhetoric often evoked by the word “capitalism” in today’s political debates.
A groundbreaking debunking of moderate attempts to resolve financial crises In the ruins of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, self-proclaimed progressives the world over clamored to resurrect the economic theory of John Maynard Keynes. The crisis seemed to expose the disaster of small-state, free-market liberalization and deregulation. Keynesian political economy, in contrast, could put the state back at the heart of the economy and arm it with the knowledge needed to rescue us. But what it was supposed to rescue us from was not so clear. Was it the end of capitalism or the end of the world? For Keynesianism, the answer is both. Keynesians are not and never have been out to save capitalism, but rather to save civilization from itself. It is political economy, they promise, for the world in which we actually live: a world in which prices are “sticky,” information is “asymmetrical,” and uncertainty inescapable. In this world, things will definitely not take care of themselves in the long run. Poverty is ineradicable, markets fail, and revolutions lead to tyranny. Keynesianism is thus modern liberalism’s most persuasive internal critique, meeting two centuries of crisis with a proposal for capital without capitalism and revolution without revolutionaries. If our current crises have renewed Keynesianism for so many, it is less because the present is worth saving, than because the future seems out of control. In that situation, Keynesianism is a perfect fit: a faith for the faithless.
This is an examination of the concept of the Law of Markets, controversial since Keynes' General Theory, and also debated even longer, since James Mill propounded it 200 years ago. Kates suggests that Keynes' General Theory originated in Keynes' discovery of Malthus's writings about Say's Law.
