Keynes and the Cambridge Keynesians: A 'Revolution in Economics' to be Accomplished

by Luigi L. Pasinetti

• ISBN13: 9780521872270
• ISBN10: 0521872278
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-12-17
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

What was the Keynesian revolution in economics? Why did it not succeed to the extent that Keynes and his close pupils had hoped for? Keynes and the Cambridge Keynesians addresses these and other questions by tracing the historical development of Keynesian economics. The book is split into three parts. Part I contains the author's Caffè Lectures on Keynes's 'unaccomplished revolution'. Part II is a series of biographical essays where the author, himself a witness and participant of the group on which he writes, presents the successful and unsuccessful endeavours of Keynes's most important pupils: Richard Kahn, Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor, Pierro Sraffa and Richard Goodwin. Part III of the book looks to the future by developing a conceptual analytical framework that makes sense of Keynes's 'revolution in economics', discussing the many ways in which the Keynesian way of doing economics is incompatible with the neoclassical tradition.

Table of Contents

List of plates	p. xii
Preface	p. xiii
Acknowledgements	p. xx
Keynes's Unaccomplished Revolution The Federico Caffe Lectures, 1995: A Note on Federico Caffe	p. 2
A decision to break with orthodoxy	p. 3
Introduction	p. 3
Alternative interpretations	p. 4
To 'revolutionise the way the world thinks about economic problems'	p. 6
A review of a well-established chronology of events	p. 8
The principle of effective demand	p. 13
Scientific revolutions and alternative paradigms	p. 16
Keynes's break with orthodoxy	p. 21
The 'revolution' after Keynes	p. 25
Foreword	p. 25
1936	p. 27
'Bastard' Keynesianism (or neoclassical synthesis?)	p. 29
The Cambridge School of Keynesian Economics	p. 33
Difficulties with absorbing odd facts (notably unemployment) into the 'normal-science' process of orthodox economics	p. 41
Post-Keynesians, neo-Ricardians, evolutionists, institutionalists and others	p. 44
Conclusion	p. 48
References for Book One	p. 51
The Cambridge School of Keynesian Economics: Prelude: the pupils of the first hour	p. 59
Richard Ferdinand Kahn (1905-1989) Co-author of The General Theory?	p. 65
Biographical essentials	p. 65
Kahn in the Cambridge Keynesian setting	p. 65
Life and scientific contributions	p. 67
Kahn and Keynes's General Theory	p. 78
Kahn and the Keynesian revolution	p. 82
Scientific writings of R. F. Kahn	p. 85
Joan Violet Robinson (1903-1983) The woman who missed the Nobel Prize for Economics	p. 94
Foreword	p. 94
Basic biography	p. 96
Distinctive traits of her intellectual personality	p. 99
Her scientific achievements	p. 102
Selected works of Joan Robinson	p. 114
Nicholas Kaldor (1908-1986) Growth, income distribution, technical progress	p. 116
The man	p. 116
Basic biography	p. 119
Kaldor's major contributions to economics	p. 121
Political activity	p. 128
Kaldor and Keynes	p. 129
Selected works of Nicholas Kaldor	p. 130
Piero Sraffa (1898-1983) The critical mind	p. 134
A brief bio-bibliographical sketch	p. 136
Biography	p. 136
Returns to scale, costs and value	p. 140
The edition of Ricardo's Works	p. 141
Production of Commodities	p. 142
The principal works of Piero Sraffa	p. 145
An Italian economist at Cambridge	p. 147
Preamble	p. 147
1926: a new rising star	p. 148
Piero Sraffa's education as an economist	p. 151
First contacts with Keynes	p. 153
The beginning of a university career	p. 155
Sraffa's personal relationships	p. 156
Friendships: Mattioli, Gramsci, Wittgenstein	p. 157
Sraffa and Keynes	p. 160
A superb critic	p. 165
Sraffa and Keynes's pupils	p. 166
The Cambridge Keynesian group	p. 169
Continuity and change in Piero Sraffa's thought	p. 172
Premise	p. 172
Evolution in Piero Sraffa's thought	p. 173
A personal immersion into Sraffa's papers	p. 174
A few hints at the Sraffa archives subdivisions	p. 176
Three streams of thought	p. 178
An impossibly grand research programme	p. 181
What fraction of the original programme?	p. 185
Final remarks (or Sraffa versus Keynes?)	p. 191
Appendix - selected documents from Sraffa's unpublished papers	p. 194
Interlude: unwise behaviour	p. 199
Richard Murphey Goodwin (1913-1996): The missed Keynes-Schumpeter connection	p. 205
Foreword	p. 205
Basic biography	p. 208
Intellectual landmarks	p. 208
A Cambridge enigma	p. 210
Italian renaissance	p. 211
A puzzling halt in Goodwin's economics creativity: Cambridge problem?	p. 212
Selected works of Richard Goodwin	p. 215
Postlude: fighting for independence	p. 217
References for Book Two	p. 238
Towards a production paradigm for an expanding economy
Beyond neoclassical economics	p. 249
Two connected 'revolutions'	p. 249
The historical background of economic analysis	p. 250
From mercantilism to neoclassicism	p. 255
Methodological reductionism of neoclassical economics	p. 263
The ideal task of Keynesian economics	p. 269
The stage of pure economic theory	p. 274
A separation theorem	p. 274
The simplest version of the 'natural' economic system	p. 279
A succinct presentation of the model	p. 281
Normative properties	p. 296
On completing the 'natural' economic system	p. 302
The stage of institutional investigation	p. 305
The role of institutions	p. 305
The institutional problem facing the challenge of history	p. 308
Disillusionment with extreme solutions and elusiveness of a 'third way'	p. 314
The separation theorem revisited	p. 323
Back to the future of the Keynesian revolution	p. 329
Recollection	p. 329
The generalising drive of the production (and learning) paradigm	p. 331
On monetary theory and policy	p. 334
Main sources of unsolved institutional problems	p. 338
Clash of the institutional implications of different paradigms	p. 348
The rationale behind conflicting institutional directions	p. 353
Innovative features: learning as a human right and free communication of achieved knowledge as a social duty	p. 356
An international claim for a resumption of Keynes's revolution in economics	p. 358
References for Book Three	p. 361
Index	p. 367
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