economist

This would be a great book to read prior to taking a macroeconomics or microeconomics class!

During World War I he was a Treasury Civil Servant. Although he would have been excused from military service, he did write to the Tribunal pleading conscientious objection. The Tribunal declined to rule.

In 1909 he was elected a Fellow at Kings College, Cambridge. Keynes drifted into monetary economics. Keynes seems to have thought of the structure of his argument before he put pencil to paper. Intuition was present in large works and in his day-to-day tasks. Keynes believed that intuition could run ahead of analysis.

Keynes was almost continuously absorbed in questions of policy. It seemed to Keynes that economics was a branch of logic. Probability is not subjective. Probability was the subject of one of his first major works. Keynes disliked theorizing for its own sake. Keynes used the Cambridge didactic style in presenting some of his arguments. As a working economist, Keynes was a rationalist.

The political elite of senior politicians, civil servants, and higher journalists could be influenced by rational persuasion and public opinion. In a democracy the elite was subject to public opinion, but opinion generated by an inner core could significantly shape general beliefs and currents of thought. Public opinion was not really firm. It could be changed by events.

Keynes had a conception of desirable society. He broke new ground in his view of the role of the state. He borrowed from Bentham in designating an agenda and nonagenda of government. First it was necessary to distinguish matters technically social or technically individual. The social ones would not get done at all if not performed by the state.

Keynes made friends with the Americans in the course of working for the treasury department during World War I. In 1918 he bought four works of art by Delacroix, Ingres, and Cezanne. In 1919 he resigned the Peace Conference and resumed private life. Keynes married Lydia Lopokova in 1925.

He spent six years, 1925-1931, on A TREATISE ON MONEY. In the United State the Federal Reserve System was showing that monetary management could combine price stability with economic expansion. In the treatise Keynes developed new tools of analysis. In the treatise Keynes accepted the desirability of an international standard of value.

Keynes advocated public works as a solution to Britain's unemployment. Britain left the gold standard in September 1931. 1931-1936 were years of preparing THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST AND MONEY. The theory of the rate of interest was Keynes's main ground for controversy in 1936 and after.

During World War II Keynes was deeply involved in framing economic issues. After the outbreak of war, Keynes's main concern was the best method of transferring resources from peacetime to wartime uses. Fiscal measures were at the center of his vision.

Keynes was mindful of the postwar consequences of wartime acts. The Bretton Woods Conference yielded plans for the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Keynes had passionate concern for the world and its ills. He emphasized the need for useful operational economic models.

Skidelsky's three-volume biography of Keynes has just been completed (to much acclaim, I think it's fair to say). One wonders, then, for whom he might have intended the short book I'm now reviewing.

An early chapter covers Keynes' life in as much detail as you could expect from a slim volume whose main emphasis is on its subject's work. (The series of which it is a part aims at providing "introductions to the thought of leading intellectual figures".) A valuable bridge between the "life" and the "work" is given by a chapter on Keynes' philosophy, showing that his early studies of probability drew on issues that were of fundamental concern to him throughout his career--and playing down, incidentally, the importance of any consistent political philosophy.

Two chapters follow on specific books: one on the earlier works, and one on the General Theory itself. It's here that I'd caution those who've had no previous exposure to macroeconomics, warning them that Skidelsky may be fair in his judgments and clear in his exposition, but that the issues are necessarily technical; to those who are not economists, these chapters will not be easy reading.

The concluding two chapters cover Keynes' activities as a "statesman" in the '30s and '40s and, finally, his "legacy". Skidelsky concludes that Keynesian thought has had its day, if only because the experiences of the '60s and '70s have destroyed confidence in the very possibility of "Keynesian" solutions. Yet his is no hatchet job on Keynesian thought. Not only does he point out that Keynes can't be blamed for his followers' mistakes--an obvious point that Skidelsky is wise not to press too far--but he also offers a fairly nuanced explanation, given his limited space, of the lack of popularity enjoyed by Keynesian thought over the past thirty years or so. (There was much more at work than just the oil crises of the '70s, to mention only the factor most commonly cited in introductory texts.)

I should at this point confess that I have a doctorate in economics, and that I teach undergraduates. I say "confess", because I find myself regrettably unable to evaluate Skidelsky's accuracy and judgment. As I said earlier, his interpretation certainly does not seem to be idiosyncratic, but I suppose there's always the possibility that he's presenting only one side of a well-known, if arcane, academic debate. If so, however, it's unfamiliar to me.

To sum up, I'd recommend this book to economists who need a little brushing up (and who could follow Skidelsky's advice about which chapters of the General Theory they really must read, and which they should skip), but also to political scientists, historians and the like who are roughly familiar with the period and who'd like to understand the views of a major economist. The good old "general reader" (if any such remain) might well enjoy this book too, but it is likely to require--and to reward--their close attention.

Galbraith is funny. You learn a lot from him, he makes you see under the surface of things. He is never boring. His writing style is exceptionally elegant. And he obviously is a very good man.

Volume 1 of the Logic of Action is subtitled "Method, Money, and the Austrian School." The range of these essays is simply incredible, and it's hard for a reviewer to know where to start. So, I might as well start with the first essay, The Mantle of Science. Here, Rothbard demolishes the claims of scientism. He must refute a dozen fallacies in 20 pages (such as false anologies to science like model-building, etc.). This essay was written in 1957 (but not published until 1960) when Rothbard traveled in Ayn Rand's circle. Incredibly, some Randroids even accused Rothbard of plagiarizing from Rand (see Justin Raimondo's excellent biography of Rothbard, An Enemy of the State, for details.) This prompted the great von Mises' response: "I really did not know that the concept that man has no automatic knowledge of how to survive and that the task of his reason . . . is to keep him alive was not known to mankind before the fall of 1957."

Another path-breaking work is the essay, The Present State of Austrian Economics, presented at a scholary conference in 1992. Rothbard describes the path taken by Austrian economists in recent years and the divergence of Hayekians and Lachmannians from a Misesian persepective.

As David Gordon and Hans-Hermann Hoppe state in their introduction: "No introduction can do justice to the vast range and insight of Rothbard's work. Anyone who completes these two volumes will have an indelible impression of Rothbard's greatness."

Volume 2 of the Logic of Action is subtitled "Applications and Criticism from the Austrian School." The range of these essays is simply incredible, and it's hard for a reviewer to know where to start. So, I might as well start with the first essay, Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor. As usual, Rothbard's reading is immense and he briliantly refutes the claims of primitivists that specialization is somehow the cause of our problems rather than the necessary result of an increasing standard of living. In fact, communists import an almost religious devotion to their communism that Kautsky even said that under communism "[t]he human average will rise to the level of an Aristotle, a Goethe, a Marx. Above these other heights new peaks will arise."

Another brilliant essay is the last, Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist. Rothbard gets to the crux of the matter: "The Key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist." As against those who would downplay Marx's religious drive to create a utopian society, Rothbard shows that Marx is just one of many "religious eschatologists."

In between these two essays there are 20 more. Whether it's "value free" economics, free banking in Scotland, marginal productivity theory, or Henry George's fallacies, Rothbard always has something brilliant to say. I really enjoyed The Myth of Tax "Reform", which should be read by every conservative activist. "Every economic activity that escapes taxes and controls is not only a blow for freedom and property rights: it is also one more instance of a free flow of productive energy getting out from under parasitic repression. That is why we should welcome every new loophole, shelter, credit or exemption, and work, not to shut them down but to expand them to include everyone else, including ourselves."

As David Gordon and Hans-Hermann Hoppe state in their introduction: "No introduction can do justice to the vast range and insight of Rothbard's work. Anyone who completes these two volumes will have an indelible impression of Rothbard's greatness."

Malabre's Lost Prophets is a very friendly introduction to the various economic thinkers of the last 100 years. His journalistic writing style draws the reader into the thinkers realm, and explains the theory and history related to each "prophet."

The book is well written and easy to read. I have found it to be a complement to my other scholarly reference material.

Sutton's book is a very nice piece of work that would help resolve tthis puzzle. Start with the STANDARD PARADIGM commonly used in modeling complex issues in social sciences, particularly in economics, Sutton pins down the limitations of these paradigm in a very easy understanding yet profound way. The next chapter starts some models that work, from a game theoretical perspective. Chapter 3, however, emphasizes the difficulties of constructing a complete model. Finally, the last chapter provides a vivid example of Sutton's argument regarding the pitfalls of modeling and its application in real life.

This nice little book is by far the best I have read in terms of explaining why social sciences are so messy, even with the introduction of nice, elegant mathematical models. It is hard to find "black-and-write" answers in social science, indeed. However, bearing in mind the importance and limitation of using mathematical models would help social scientists face the and frustration in a constructive way.