John Eatwell and Murray Milgate
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199777693
- eISBN:
- 9780190261344
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199777693.001.0001
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Macro- and Monetary Economics
During the 1970s, monetarism and the new classical macroeconomics ushered in an era of neoliberal economic policymaking. Keynesian economics was pushed aside. It was almost forgotten that when ...
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During the 1970s, monetarism and the new classical macroeconomics ushered in an era of neoliberal economic policymaking. Keynesian economics was pushed aside. It was almost forgotten that when Keynesian thinking had dominated economic policymaking in the middle decades of the twentieth century, it had coincided with postwar economic reconstruction in both Europe and Japan, and the unprecedented prosperity and stable growth of the 1950s and 1960s. The global financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the recession that followed changed all that. Influential voices in both academic economics and amongst policy-makers and commentators began to remind us how useful Keynesian ways of thinking could be, especially in coming to terms with our current economic predicaments. When politicians across the globe were confronted with economic crisis, they introduced pragmatic and workable measures that bore all the hallmarks of Keynesianism. This book is about the fall and rise of Keynesian economics. This book ranges widely across the landscape that defines its subject matter. It considers how powerful Keynesian ideas can be when applied to past and present economic problems. It shows how helpful these ideas are in explaining why we came to find ourselves in the disorder we are in. It examines where and how the analytical and methodological foundations of conventional macroeconomic wisdom went wrong. It sets out a blueprint for an alternative that provides a clearer, more consistent, and more applicable approach to understanding how markets work. It also highlights the interpretive shortcomings that have come to characterize Keynes scholarship itself. This is done within the context of a provocative reconsideration of some of the most pressing economic problems that confront financial markets and the global economy today. The book concludes that Keynesian ideas are not just for crises, but for constructive economic policy making at all times.Less
During the 1970s, monetarism and the new classical macroeconomics ushered in an era of neoliberal economic policymaking. Keynesian economics was pushed aside. It was almost forgotten that when Keynesian thinking had dominated economic policymaking in the middle decades of the twentieth century, it had coincided with postwar economic reconstruction in both Europe and Japan, and the unprecedented prosperity and stable growth of the 1950s and 1960s. The global financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the recession that followed changed all that. Influential voices in both academic economics and amongst policy-makers and commentators began to remind us how useful Keynesian ways of thinking could be, especially in coming to terms with our current economic predicaments. When politicians across the globe were confronted with economic crisis, they introduced pragmatic and workable measures that bore all the hallmarks of Keynesianism. This book is about the fall and rise of Keynesian economics. This book ranges widely across the landscape that defines its subject matter. It considers how powerful Keynesian ideas can be when applied to past and present economic problems. It shows how helpful these ideas are in explaining why we came to find ourselves in the disorder we are in. It examines where and how the analytical and methodological foundations of conventional macroeconomic wisdom went wrong. It sets out a blueprint for an alternative that provides a clearer, more consistent, and more applicable approach to understanding how markets work. It also highlights the interpretive shortcomings that have come to characterize Keynes scholarship itself. This is done within the context of a provocative reconsideration of some of the most pressing economic problems that confront financial markets and the global economy today. The book concludes that Keynesian ideas are not just for crises, but for constructive economic policy making at all times.
