The Economic Problem of Happiness: Keynes on Happiness and Economics

By stressing the substantial continuity of vision between John Maynard Keynes’s early unpublished essays and his more mature writings, the paper discusses Keynes’s ethics and focuses on his thoughts about happiness. In particular, we emphasize the anti-utilitarianism of Keynes’s vision and his belief that material wealth is but a precondition to enjoy the possibilities of a good life, and direct attention to problems of incommensurability raised by the multidimensional nature of happiness as considered by Keynes. We then argue that the rediscovery of Keynes’s legacy in this respect may be a precious counterweight to the most controversial aspects of today’s happiness research.     

High pressure and black clouds: Keynes and the frequentist theory of probability

The thesis of this paper is that Keynes wrote A Treatise onProbability in opposition to the frequentist theory of probability,systematised by John Venn, which denied any role for probabilityin decision theory. Keynes was interested in finding an alternativeconception of probability that could be utilised as a guideof life. To analyse this point, the paper considers Keynes'scriticisms of frequentist tradition in the two versions of hisFellowship dissertation, and in the published edition of hisTreatise. Keynes's project is then illustrated with the famousexample of whether or not to go out with one's umbrella in thesituation in which the pressure is high and the clouds are black.     

Volume XXXIV – 2000

In the attempt to deepen the understanding of Keynes' thought as an international macroeconomist, we explore the hypothesis of consistency between his general methodological approach to the economic material and his way of reasoning about international economic relations. As a first step toward this direction, we investigate the methodology of The Economic Consequences of the Peace and find that it reflects Keynes' attempt to cope with the attributes of the complexity characterizing the European settlement for the post-war period, e.g., 1) organic interdependence among variables at play, 2) irreducible dilemmas and situations of conflict, as well as 3) the need for external, public assistance to overcome the impasse and promote a "shared responsibilities" approach to the imbalances. Striking similarities appearing with the method of Keynes' economic diplomacy in the 1940s are shown to substantiate the current rediscovery of his plans for Bretton Woods.     

Vicarelli,Keynes, and the unstable nexus between investment,liquidity, and finance

The goal of this article is to reconstruct Keynes’s vision of the unstable nexus between investment, liquidity and finance, as set out by the Italian economist Fausto Vicarelli (1936–1986). As argued in the article, one of Vicarelli’s main contributions consists of explaining the inherent instability of financially sophisticated capitalist economies in terms of the interaction (and double dissociation) between investment, saving, and stock-holding decisions, within a Keynesian framework characterized by the presence of fundamental uncertainty. While Vicarelli’s interpretation of Keynes is best understood in the context of the post-Keynesian literature, its relevance goes beyond that, as its sheds light on current issues related to the post-2008 financial crisis and its policy implications.     

A Nightmare in Introductory Economics

In a pair of 1925 lectures, John Maynard Keynes described world economic history with reference to a classification of stages developed by John R. Commons. This article examines Keynes’s two 1925 lectures in the context of Commons’s writings. It spotlights lesser-known aspects of Commons’s scholarship and helps clarify ambiguities in Keynes’s two addresses. It also identifies a key document, written by Commons, upon which Keynes relied when developing his presentations. In addition, the article explains how the work of Commons and Keynes in the 1920s has relevance for the contemporary development of evolutionary Keynesianism (which can also be called Post-Keynesian Institutionalism).     

How Germany’s anti-Keynesianism has brought Europe to its knees

This paper investigates the (lack of any lasting) impact of John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory on economic policy-making in Germany. The analysis highlights the interplay between economic history and the history of ideas in shaping policy-making in postwar (West) Germany. The paper argues that Germany learned the wrong lessons from its own history and misread the true sources of its postwar success. Monetary mythology and the Bundesbank, with its distinctive anti-inflationary bias, feature prominently in this collective odyssey. The analysis shows that the crisis of the euro today is largely the consequence of Germany’s peculiar anti-Keynesianism.     

Vicarelli’s Keynes (and today’s international disorder)

The article speculates about the legacy of Fausto Vicarelli’s interpretation of John Maynard Keynes’s work in the times of a major global crisis. In particular, it puts an emphasis on those aspects of Keynes’s “method” that Vicarelli rightly considered as revolutionary in his Keynes, of 1977, as well as in other writings. The article then turns to Vicarelli’s reconstruction of Keynes’s early work in international economics (Indian Currency and Finance, Economic Consequences of the Peace) and reflects upon the continuing relevance of the philosophy inspiring Keynes’s plans of global reform in the Forties, also in the light of Vicarelli’s (Keynes-inspired) vision of the problem of policy space at the international level.     

Keynes and the international monetary system: Time for a tabular standard?

This paper discusses proposals for tabular standards in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, we focus on Keynes’ proposal for an international tabular standard (ITS) as the gold standard unravelled in the 1930s. The paper explains the origins of Keynes’ ITS proposal which pegged the value of an international reserve to a broad index of primary commodities, weighted in terms of their value in world production. We argue that the ITS should be viewed as an important and enduring component of Keynes’ ideal long-run vision for anchoring the international monetary system, even post-Bretton Woods.     

School Expenditures and Educational Discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment

This paper examines the decline in use of the Knight-Keynes uncertainty concept in mainstream economics. Using electronic archives, it shows that the frequency of its appearance in leading journals of economics has fallen rapidly from the 1950s. As well as to the declining popularity of Keynesian ideas since about 1970, the decrease in this use of the uncertainty concept is additionally related to the increasing mathematical formalization of economics and to the prevalence of a positivist emphasis on prediction. Some possible causes of this formalization are examined. Finally the essay discusses the prospects for a broadening of economics within universities, beyond a relatively narrow preoccupation with predictive formalism and including a reinvigorated Keynesianism.     

Keynes against Kalecki on economic method

In the past twenty years, there has been considerable debate on the “coherence” of post Keynesian economics, in view of post Keynesian economists’ ambitions to develop a paradigmatic alternative to neoclassical economics. Given the growing importance of methodological aspects in this discussion, this article addresses the differences of approach to economic theory between the fathers of the two most important strands in post Keynesian economics. We thus focus on Keynes’s criticism of Kalecki’s theory of the business cycle and the tensions between Keynes’s logical approach and Kaleki’s formal modeling. We show that in criticizing Kalecki’s theory, Keynes made use of the same methodological criticism (based on detecting logical fallacies in reasoning) he had employed to attack both the classical theory and contemporary “pseudo-mathematical” models. After illustrating these fundamental differences between Keynes and Kalecki about the proper way of doing economics, we draw some conclusions on the possible future evolution of post Keynesian economics.     

Keynes and Sraffa's 'Difficulties with J. H. Hollander'

The paper reports on Jacob H. Hollander's cooperation with John Maynard Keynes and Piero Sraffa in the preparation of the latter's edition of The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo. The report is based on archive material from various sources, including the unpublished papers of Edwin Cannan, Piero Sraffa, Jacob H. Hollander, John Maynard Keynes, and Jacob Viner, and the archive of the Royal Economic Society. The archive material consulted by us shows that, put mildly, Jacob H. Hollander did not promote Sraffa's editorial project: he held back material which he had received from Frank Ricardo and did not disclose to Sraffa that he owned several important letters which he had privately purchased. Moreover, Sraffa was refused access to Ricardiana even after he had traced them down in laborious detective work to be in Hollander's possession. Hollander's unwillingness to cooperate with Sraffa considerably delayed the publication of the Ricardo edition.     

Hans Singer's debts to Schumpeter and Keynes

This essay discusses Hans Singer's intellectual formation andthe influences on his early writings and on his post-1947 developmenteconomics. It asks what impact the unusual experience of studyingwith both Schumpeter and Keynes had upon his subsequent economicthinking and practice. It argues that the influence of boththese mentors was surprisingly small, compared with that ofSpiethoff and Clark. Singer repaid his debts to Schumpeter andKeynes, but by working in the new currency of development economics,some of which was his own coinage. His motivation for this vasteffort was derived from the social egalitarianism of figuressuch as William Beveridge, Archbishop Temple and R. H. Tawney,rather than the liberalism of Schumpeter and Keynes.     

What keeps long-term U.S. interest rates so low?

U.S. government indebtedness and fiscal deficits increased notably following the Global Financial Crisis. Yet long-term interest rates and U.S. Treasury yields have remained remarkably low. What keeps long-term interest rates so low? This paper relies on a simple model, based on John Maynard Keynes’ view that the central bank's actions are the key drivers of long-term interest rates, to explain the behavior of long-term interest rates in the U.S. The empirical findings confirm that short-term interest rates are the most important determinants of long-term interest rates in the U.S. Contrary to conventional wisdom, higher government indebtedness has a negative effect on long-term interest rates, particularly on a long run basis. However, in the short run, higher government indebtedness has a positive effect on long-term interest rates. These are relevant for contemporary policy debates and macroeconomic theory.     

Silvio Gesell: “A strange,unduly neglected” monetary theorist

Abstract

In recent years negative nominal interest rates came to the attention of a wider audience as one instrument to overcome the lower zero bound to conventional monetary policy. Modern proponents trace the origin of the proposal back to Silvio Gesell, a largely forgotten German autodidactic scholar of the interwar period, whose work provides valuable insight into heterodox late nineteenth- and twentieth-century economic thinking. Against this backdrop, the present article provides a comprehensive review of Gesell’s life and social economy, firmly linking him to German anarchism of the interwar period. It suggests that Gesell not only provided a monetary theory of interest, but put forward an independent monetary theory of economic crisis that is essential in understanding the historical origins of depreciative currency proposals. Moreover, the article maintains that Gesell’s monetary theory of interest can be seen as the missing link between heterodox economics, The General Theory, and anarchist economic theory.     

Augusto Graziani and the Marx-Schumpeter-Keynes ‘Cycle of Money Capital’: A Personal Look at the Early Italian Circuitism from an Insider

ABSTRACT

The paper goes back to the origins of the theory of the monetary circuit in its Italian incarnation. Focus is on the evolution of Augusto Graziani's thinking between mid-1970s and mid-1980s, considering: (i) how Graziani connected (positively or polemically) with Keynesianism and Post-Keynesianism, both in its Cambridge and US incarnations; (ii) how Graziani interpreted the contributions of Keynes proposing a continuity between the Treatise on Money, the General Theory, and the articles on finance published after the 1936 book; (iii) how beneath the research programme of Italian circuitism (Graziani) we may recognise a peculiar Marxian inspiration, later on pursued for a while by some participants to the Seminar in Monetary Theory that Graziani coordinated in Naples (1981–85). Since the mid-1970s Graziani — who already had a profound knowledge of Neoclassical Theory; and who was deeply aware of the role of institutions — developed more and more his heretical stance into what we may label as a ‘structural Keynesian' approach, inserting Keynes’ views about finance to production and effective demand into a Schumpeterian vision of the capitalist process, and leading to Marxian conclusions about value and distribution. The early forays into circuitism by Graziani were not only critical towards the Neoclassical Synthesis, Monetarism, or New Classical Macroeconomics. They were also grounded in an intense confrontation with other contemporary heterodox currents. The outcome was the construction of an original scheme of thought which amounted to nothing less than a macro-monetary theory of capitalist production.     

弘扬生态公德 建设生态文明

建设生态文明是中共十七大对有中国特色社会主义理论体系的新发展。要建设生态文明,必须大力提倡弘扬爱护环境,节约资源的生态公德。生态公德主要包括:珍惜资源,保护生态;尊重生命,爱护生态;发展经济,协调生态;爱惜水源,呵护生态;广泛宣传.心系生态。人人明了生态公德,人人遵守生态公德,事事以生态为先,时时以生态为念,生态文明的大厦才能高高建起。     

Foreign investment, reparations and the proposal for an international bank: notes on the lectures of J M Keynes in Geneva, July 1929

Keynes's lectures to the Geneva School of International Studiesprovide substance to the intellectual linkages between the Cambridgedon and economists working in international economic agenciesduring the inter-war period. Keynes was keenly sought afteras a policy adviser; as the notes to these lectures indicate,he provided his audience with theoretical insights into thepressing issues of the day - reparations and the transfer problem,the economic foundations of the Dawes and Young Plans, and proposalsfor an international bank.     

Knowledge Questions: Hayek,Keynes and Beyond

This paper discusses the knowledge problem in terms of both the use and generation of knowledge. This is analyzed in the context of Hayek's failure to respond to the Keynes Challenge—the claim that markets fail to produce relevant knowledge—by suggesting that in the aftermath of The General Theory he was not well-positioned to address that problem. Ironically, his post-World War II work in cognitive psychology, The Sensory Order, offers a theory of the generation of knowledge which can provide a useful analogy for understanding the generation of market-level knowledge.