Richard Posner became a Keynesian Yesterday
by Benjamin on September 24, 2009
Richard Posner, One of the most influential legal minds in the USA and a lecturer at Chicago yesterday became a Keynesian… And here I am not talking new-keynesian, post-keynesian, bastard-keynesian or neo-keynesian… I mean, he picked up The General Theory, read it, and he likes it. He even agrees with it, when only recently:
I would not have been surprised by, or inclined to challenge, the claim made in 1992 by Gregory Mankiw, a prominent macroeconomist at Harvard, that “after fifty years of additional progress in economic science, The General Theory is an outdated book. We are in a much better position than Keynes was to figure out how the economy works.” We have learned since September that the present generation of economists has not figured out how the economy works.
So then… People are actually reading Keynes’s economics again. I guess it can’t hurt to start reading the old masters.
Tags: Keynes, Keynesian, Richard Posner, The General Theory
I’ve been reading along for a while now. I just wanted to drop you a comment to say keep up the good work.
Given the recent developments in the economics profession I find it not surprising that there is more and more interest in Keynes. And I think that since Krugman’s Robbins lectures at the LSE Krugman can be considered as one of the leaders of the movement.
Also, there are a couple of new books on the subject, for example Paul Davidson’s The Keynes Solution and Lord Skidelsky’s “The Return of the Master” (Krugman’s review here) which Posner mentions in his blurb.
I’m wondering if this Keynes-revival would be a good topic for the next issue of the New School Economic Review?
I think you’re right Matthias that Krugman is a front-figure in this revival but more and more are coming out of the woodwork.
Something along those lines would be interesting for the coming NSER issue, we are planning to set up an issue looking at the history of economics, so its definitely something we would take papers on… Call for papers to follow :)