John Maynard Keynes

Great Thinkers in Economics

by Paul Davidson

This book looks at the life of Keynes leading up to the writing of his seminal General Theory , examines the General Theory in detail, and explores how it differs from classical theory. The impact of Keynes's work on the economy postwar and up to the present day is also assessed.

Genres: Economics, Biography, History

237 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2007

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Davidson did not originally choose economics as a profession. His primary training was in chemistry, for which he got a BSc from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1951 he worked in that same university as an instructor in physiology and chemistry. He soon switched to economics, receiving his MBA from the City University of New York in 1955, and completing his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in 1959.

He has taught economics at University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, Bristol University, University of Cambridge, and the University of Tennessee. He is a Visiting Scholar at the Schwartz Center For Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research and is currently an Emeritus Holly Professor of Excellence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is especially known for promoting a Post Keynesian school of macroeconomics. He and Sidney Weintraub founded the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics in 1978. He is the Editor of the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics.

Reviews

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fantastic introduction to John Maynard Keynes's main work, the General Theory of Employment. Professor Davidson explains it clearly and thoroughly, and compares its features with those of the mainstream "efficient markets" Classic Economics. The book explains the circumstances in which Keynesian policies were applied by governments without comprehension of the underlying theories, by way of a series of "lecture notes" that a student in Keynes's class brought from Cambridge to Harvard. A final chapter examines the 2008 mortgage-backed-securities crash in light of Keynes's General Theory.

Highly recommended for students of Economics and non-economists alike.

[Flob · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent overview of JMK. These are complex ideas which are ovbiously difficult to absorb even for the professionals. But they are also important ideas. This book repays careful study.

[David Abernethy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have three books in the Palgrave series Great Thinkers in Economics: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Maynard Keynes. The authors of the Smith and Ricardo books are even-handed in their treatments; Kennedy's preface to Adam Smith states "This is not, however, an essay in hagiography." Each ends with an assessment of the subject's legacy. No so with Mr. Davidson on Keynes! We are not told merely of Keynes' theory, but, endlessly, of "Keynes' revolutionary theory". Economists, including neo-Keynesians, who fail to embrace as a whole original Keynesianism are dismissed as failing to understand it, or even being unable to understand it due to pre-conditioning. Davidson's book can be described as a hagiography. An author should be able to write as he or she wishes, so I fault the editor of the Palgrave series for including such a "true believer's" diatribe in the series.