Thursday, January 24, 2013

Simon Wren-Lewis ignores heterodox economics, again.


Who is doing the misinterpreting here. I submit that it is Professor Wren-Lewis who has missed the Godley Revolution, the Lerner Revolution, and the Minsky Revolution, as well as the bulk of Post Keynesianism, when he says,
If you bought the ‘responding to the last crisis’ narrative, you would expect to see some sea change, akin to Keynesian economics or the New Classical revolution. I suspect you would be disappointed. While I see plenty of financial frictions being added to DSGE models, I do not see any significant body of macroeconomists wanting to ply their trade in a radically different way. If this crisis is going to generate a new revolution in macroeconomics, where are the revolutionaries? However, if you read the history of macro thought the way I do, then macro crises are neither necessary nor sufficient for revolutions in macro thought. Perhaps there was only one real revolution, and we have been adjusting to the tensions that created ever since.
Of course, if he is thinking that all the above mentioned are part of the Keynesian revolution, no issue, but I don't think he is, especially when the above hold that the Keynesian-neoclassical synthesis is not Keynesian in any genuine sense, but rather a perversion of Keynes.

mainly macro
Misinterpreting the history of macroeconomic thought
Simon Wren-Lewis _ Professor of Economics, Oxford University

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