What Keynesian Revolution? A Reconsideration Seventy Years After The General Theory

Economists and non-economists are more inclined to read about John Maynard Keynes than about other eminent dead economists, and such terms as New Classical, New Keynesian, and Post Keynesian indicate that the issues that divided Keynes from those he labeled as classical still inspire research, however distant and hazy may be the historical awareness of such recent mainstream writers as Mankiw (1992). Widely read biographies by Don Moggridge and Robert Skidelsky reveal both a fascinating life and a public career of historical significance from the critique of the Versailles peace treaty to the Bretton Woods negotiations, and a more specialized literature considers Keynes’s views on philosophy and probability (and will undoubtedly be revived when Rod O’Donnell’s long-awaited supplement to Keynes’s Collected Writings finally appears), but most of all the continuing attention to Keynes focuses on his repute as the man who revolutionized economics.