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1924. Keynes is undoubtedly one the most important figures in the entire history of economics. He revolutionized economics with his classic book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which is generally regarded as the most influential social science treatise of the 20th Century, in that it quickly and permanently changed the way the world looked at the economy and the role of government in society. No other single book, before or since, has had quite such an impact. This is his tract on Monetary Reform which was his contribution to the Cambridge cash-balance theory of money, then being developed by other Cambridge economists, Alfred Marshall, Arthur C. Pigou and Dennis H. Robertson. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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'A path-breaking contribution to the intellectual history of our time, and a kind of hymn to the role of creative imagination in social thought.' - D.Marquand 'Anyone who wants to understand modern Britain has to read Skidelsky's biography.' - T.Congdon ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fine book on a great man
This is vol. 2 of Skidelsky's Keynes biography (any sign of vol. 3?).It is a very enjoyable (and exhaustive) account of the most productive professional years (Bretton Woods aside) of one of the great figures of the20th century.Keynes was the son of Victorian intellectual academicbougiousie; a star of the public school system; trained in mathematics andeconomics (student of Marshall); student of philosophy, then a bureaucratin academia and government, becoming an expert in public finance as ahigh-ranking Treasury official during WWI; a traveller in artistic circles(later a benefactor),part of the Bloomsbury group (intimate with DuncanGrant, Virginia Woolf, etc. (to differing degrees, of course));statistician/philosopher (his first major published work was "ATreatise on Probability"); pamphleteer ("Economic Consequences ofthe Peace," etc.); publisher/editor for both the popular and academicpress; institutional investor; currency speculator; husband to a Russianballet dancer; and most influential economist of the 20th century.Keyneswould not be possible today.

The one drawback to the Skidelsky book isthat it can be slow going.Those with no background in economics should beprepared to skim sections (or work hard).If you're already familiar withthe difference between Ricardo and Malthus, and how their thinking carriedthrough Jevons, Marshall, and Marx, and can follow arguments on goldstandard vs. floating exchange rates, then you should be able to breezethrough. ... Read more

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Ignores the fundamental policy conclusion of Keynes
Wattel has published a book of collected essays that are quite dated .Keynes's main policies did not involve income redistribution measures,incomes policies,tax cuts,wage and price controls,etc.,which is what is presented as Keynes's policy consequences.Keynes and Keynesian are used interchangeably in this book.This is inaccurate.Nowhere in the 30 volumes of The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes,which include the General Theory of 1936,will any reader find any support for deficit financing ,which involves creating a budget deficit by cutting income tax rates in order to encourage an increase in present consumption spending.Keynes's main policy conclusion was to maintain low,fixed rates of interest ,while simultaneously cutting off credit and loan availability from individuals seeking to use such loans to leverage their financial positions in speculative assets.The failure of such schemes imposes major externalityand spillover costs on the rest of society.The major goal of the Federal Reserve System should be to prevent loans from falling into the hands of such individual borrowers.This policy is identical to the policy recommendations made by Adam Smith in the Wealth of nations in 1776(See pp,338-340 of the Modern Library(Cannan)edition).None of the essayists in this book discuss this at all. ... Read more

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An introduction to Keynesian economics and a study of the influence of Keynes' ideas on economic theory and economic policy through conversations with eight leading economists, including several Nobel prize winners. ... Read more

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Blaug overlooks the main points of the GT
This is a much,much shorter biography of the typeexhibited by R.Skidelsky in his three volume biography of Keynes(1983,1992,2000).It is an excellent book for the generalist who is interested in Keynes the man.Blaug covers,in very general terms,Keynes's life story,his basic philosophy(economics,politics,ethics,etc.),and his contributions to economics,history,and philosophy.Blaug interviews various economists who claim that they are Keynesians and presents their assessment of Keynes's contributions.On the other hand,the book is a complete waste of time to a reader who wants a straightforward accounting of Keynes's technical contributions .There is absolutely nothing presented in this book that would allow a reader to understand why Keynes is the greatest economist of this century.I will spend the rest of this review correcting this lacuna.First,Keynes was the first scholar in history to develop an interval valued approach to probability.Second,he was the first to put forth a logical theory of probability.Third,he was the first to define and integrate into decision theory a decision rule(his conventional coefficient of weight and risk,c)incorporatingwhat Keynes called the weight of the evidence,w',where w' is defined on the unit interval [0,1].Keynes generalized the expected value(expected monetary value)and expected utility(subjective expected utility)decision rules.Fourth,Keynes generalized macroeconomic theory with his demonstration that the existence of involuntary unemployment could be modeled as multiple equilibria.Keynes accomplished this by demonstrating that the general case in macroeconomic theory is given by the optimality condition w/p=mpl/(mpc+mpi),where mpc+mpi is < or = 1,w/p is the real wage,mpl is the marginal product of labor derived from a neoclassical aggregate production function,mpc is the marginal propensity to spend on consumption goods,and mpi is the marginal propensity to spend on investment goods.The classical and neoclassical theory(monetarism,rational expectations,real business cycle,supplyside.etc.)is all based on the special case ,that mpc+mpi=1.In this special case you obtain the neoclassical result, w/p=mpl, which defines an equilibrium position in the labor market which is also a point on both of the boundaries of the static and dynamic production possibilities curves.Finally,Keynes generalized the Quantity theory of money by incorporating uncertainty(Ellsbergian ambiguity)into the equation of exchamge using elasticity analysis that distinguished between actual,realized results and expected results.A simplified version of Keynes's accomplishment is that ,instead of MV=PO,where M is the supply of money,V is the velocity,P is the price level,O is real output,and PO is nominal output,the equation of exchange must be written as M(Vw')=PO,where w' (Ellsberg's rho)is defined on the unit interval between 0 and 1.The classical and neoclassical results are a special case that occurs only if w'=1 or is approaching 1.This is the case of risk.If w<1,decision makers are facing conditions of Keynesian Uncertainty or Ellsbergian Ambiguity,not risk.Under such conditions it is mathematically impossible for V to be stable,constant,predictable,or strictly proportional to nominal output.This simply means that all of the work of Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas,which is based on the misbelief that only risk,represented by a normal probability distribution's mean and standard deviation,is relevant is a special case of Keynes's(AND Ellsberg's)general theory of decision making.

ideas of economists...are more powerful...
The origins of this slim volume lie in a video that the author undertook for the Institute of Economic Affairs. As Blaug notes, the limitations of a one hour programme encouraged him to use his reference material to write this book which, I should say at the outset, should be on the shelves of anyone who claims to have an interest in Economics.

John Maynard Keynes occupies a strange position in the pantheon of economic thought. Revered and detested by different groups, he is like a candidate for sainthood, adjudged to be possessedof mythical and miraculous powers including second sight as well as being the originator of much which is claimed by his disciples as stemming from his greates work.

To talk of Keynes in such a fashion is appropriate because he is revered by his followers as nuch as many Eastern deities, taken from this earth before his time, and with a legacy that is kept by the faithful as the Holy Grail.

Blaug's central concerns lie in what is meant by Keynesianism (or what is purported to be the policy prescriptions deduced from the writings of the master), how the theories derived from Keynes took hold among almost the entire swathe of economists throughout the world in such a short space of time, and to determine if there is any future in Keynesian theory.

The book is clearly divided in three just as the title describes: Life, Ideas and legacy and in the concise, clear and lucid way that the author is well known for. Indeed, reading through this prose is very reminiscent of the work of Arthur Seldon in it's judicious editing and clarity.

The book is relatively short and by being so focussed enables the reader, general and specialist to get to the heart of the issue without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail or doctrinal disputes. Keynes' colourful life is referred to in a factual way without any prejudicial remarks and to me it's only drawback is the fact that there is no exposition of the relationship between Keynes and Hayek, While there was clear evidence of the rivalry which took place professionally between these two giant intellects of the 20th Century, there has been little written of the friendliness and very courteous relations which existed between them. Perhaps one day a study along those lines may be presented.

Keynes' ideas and intellectual development are again clearly discussed in what some may feel as too short an exposition but given the author's clear intent to provide a window to further study and to cover only the core ideas it seems very appropriate. Blaug develops the ideas into their takeup by scholars and policy-makers around the world in the context of a timeframe to establish the speed at which they took hold.

Finally, Blaug interviews some of the high priests of the new religion to establish basic building blocks, to elaborate clearly different fundamental aspects of the emerging Kuhnian scientifi revolution and to project forward into the future about the developments of Keynesian theory.

For me it is the latter section which holds most of the intellectual interest of the book, offering some interesting lines of inquiry and opening up the world view of Keynesianism to see that it is a broad church indeed. One of the flattering features of this approach is that in more recent times it has been taken up and developed by Brian Snowdon and Howard Vane in a series of volumes about the development of macroeconomics wherein they identify recent developments in theory and associate them with interviews with the various authors.

However, to the subject in hand, Blaug's exposition does not claim to be the final word on Keynes. Indeed his further reading lists refers the interested reader to the eceptional work of Professor Skidelsky among others who has done sterling work on Keyne. What it does provide is a working guide to this fascinating man and his works and the way in which his supporters and disciples broadened those lines of inquiry into the subject we know today. In writing this he provides a better context for Keynes than is normally provided and shows that while there was a lot that was new in his work, there was a lot that was a development from the ideas that he tried to refute.

Overall I would strongly recommend that even now this book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in economics, politics or the development of ideas. Blaug is an excellent writer and he has very ably provided a highly readable very comprehensive introduction to what is now a very sophisticated and complex subject. ... Read more

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Keynes's personality was fixed by the clash between Moorean values - other-worldliness, idealism, pacifism - and Keynes's own nature which craved and attained worldly success, wealth and social influence and approbation. The result was an "existential" outlook that caused him to become particularly sensitive to the human condition, to human suffering and to real concern. Accordingly, Keynes came to see the world through human, down-to-earth, social and psychological categories, which were opposed to the "devine" Platonism of classical economics. This book is thus opposed to the recent probability-based interpretations of Keynes's mature work. ... Read more

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The ideas of John Maynard Keynes revolutionised twentieth-century economics, and continue to provoke debate today. This book explores fully, for the first time, Keynes' thinking on international relations and its links to his views on economics. ... Read more

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Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "John Maynard Keynes," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have John Maynard Keynes in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with John Maynard Keynes when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name John Maynard Keynes, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

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John Maynard Keynes is universally acknowledged as both the greatest and most influential economist of the twentieth century. This second set of assessments sets a new benchmark in Keynes scholarship by making available 150 more of the most significant journal articles on Keynes and his economics, from contributors such as the distinguished economists Paul Samuelson, James Tobin, and J. K. Galbraith. ... Read more