The Keynesian Tradition (Archival Insights Into the Evolution of Economics)

236 Pages·2008·0.65 MB·English

by  Robert Leeson

The Keynesian Tradition
Edited by
Robert Leeson
9781403_949608_01_previii.qxp 4/4/2008 2:26 PM Page i
The Keynesian Tradition
This page intentionally left blank
9781403_949608_01_previii.qxp 4/4/2008 2:26 PM Page iii
The Keynesian Tradition
Edited by
Robert Leeson
9781403_949608_01_previii.qxp 4/4/2008 2:26 PM Page iv
Selection and editorial matter © Robert Leeson 2008
Individual chapters © contributors 2008
All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this publication
may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988,or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,90
Tottenham Court Road,London W1T 4LP.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this
work in accordance with the Copyright.Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2008 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire RG21 6XS and
175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010
Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St.Martin’s Press,LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States,United Kingdom
and other countries.Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN-13:978-1-4039-4960-8 hardback
ISBN-10:1-4039-4960-3 hardback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources.Logging,pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe Chippenham and
Eastbourne
9781403_949608_01_previii.qxp 4/4/2008 2:26 PM Page v
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vi
List of Contributors vii
1. Introduction 1
Robert Leeson
2. Archival Research and the Reconstruction of Piero Sraffa’s
Intellectual Biography: An Interim Report 4
Nerio Naldi
3. The Collaboration between Keynes and Robertson during
the Second World War: APerspective from the
National Archives 42
Eleonora Sanfilippo
4. Harrod’s Discontent with Harrodian Growth Theory 65
Daniele Besomi
5. Patinkin’s Interpretation of Keynesian Economics: AGenetic
Approach 99
Goulven Rubin
6. Is IS-LM a Static or Dynamic ‘Keynesian’ Model? 126
Warren Young
7. The Post Keynesian Assault on Orthodoxy: Insights from the
Weintraub Archive 135
J.E. King
8. The Cambridge Keynesians: Kahn, J. Robinson and Kaldor
A Perspective from Their Archives 196
Maria Cristina Marcuzzo and Annalisa Rosselli
Index 221
v
9781403_949608_01_previii.qxp 4/4/2008 2:26 PM Page vi
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
5.1 Patinkin, 1947:85 109
5.2 1947a, p. 102 111
Tables
8.1 Kahn’s Papers 198
8.2 Robinson’s Papers 204
8.3 Kaldor’s Papers 209
vi
9781403_949608_01_previii.qxp 4/4/2008 2:26 PM Page vii
List of Contributors
Daniele Besomi is an independent researcher in Switzerland.
J.E. Kingis Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and
Finance at La Trobe University, Australia.
Maria CristinaMarcuzzo is Professor of Economics in the Dipartimento
di Scienze Economiche at the Università di Roma La Sapienza, Italy.
Nerio Naldiis Associate Professor of Economics in the Dipartimento di
Scienze Economiche at the Università di Roma La Sapienza, Italy.
Annalisa Rosselli is Professor of Economics in the Dipartimento di
Economia e Istituzioni at the Università di Roma Tor Vergata, Italy.
Goulven Rubin is Lecturer in Economics at LED-PHARE, Département
d’économie et de gestion, Université de Paris 8 Saint-Denis, France.
Eleonora Sanfilippo is Research Fellow in the History of Economic
Thought in the Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche at the Università
di Roma La Sapienza, Italy.
Warren Youngis Associate Professor of Economics in the Department of
Economics at Bar Ilan University, Israel.
vii
This page intentionally left blank
9781403_949608_02_cha01.qxp 11/20/2007 9:13 AM Page 1
1
Introduction
Robert Leeson
These chapters highlight an important but neglected point: economics
often provides profound insights into social interaction, but economists
rarely delve into the subterranean world in which their culture, tools and
prejudices are forged. Market forces produce results that surprise and con-
foundsocial moralists; the hands by which economists correspond and
argue have, hitherto, remained largely invisible. These chapters use pub-
lished and archival evidence to illuminate the internal dynamics of the
knowledge production (and destruction) processes of the economics
industry.
The development of modern macroeconomics has been a fractured
and fractious affair. It began in the early 1930s with a deliberately con-
structed cleavage between John Maynard Keynes (plus his radical dis-
ciples, Joan Robinson and Richard Kahn) and those denigrated by Keynes
as ‘Classical’ economists. Later, a further cleavage developed between
the radical Post-Keynesians and the more conservative advocates of the
Keynesian Neoclassical Synthesis. As these two groups (the Left Keynesians,
centered in Cambridge, England, the Right Keynesians, centered in
Cambridge, Massachusetts) struggled over Keynes’ mantle and over
theories of capital, growth and distribution, free market economists
at the University of Chicago pushed economics in an anti-Keynesian
direction.
In the decade before the launch of the Keynesian revolution, Keynes was
transformed from an orthodox to a quasi-radical economist. The trajec-
tory of this transformation was influenced, in part, by those around him
and in particular by those who sought to nudge him along this path.
Keynes had become internationally famous as a polemicist following the
publication of The Economic Consequences of the Peace(1919); his revulsion
against the ‘orthodox’ reaction to some of the dislocations of the inter-war
1