Summary of Post Keynesian economics
The final point that Hamouda and Harcourt (1988: 25) make is that it is within each strand that coherent approaches and macroeconomic theories have been developed.Social Democracy For The 21St Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective
They conclude:
“… within the various strands that we have discerned and described, there are coherent frameworks and approaches to be found, though obviously there remain within each unfinished business and unresolved puzzles. The real difficulty arises when attempts are made to synthesize the strands in order to see whether a coherent whole emerges. Our own view is that this is a misplaced exercise, that to attempt to do so is mainly to search for what Joan Robinson called ‘only another box of tricks’ to replace the ‘complete theory’ of mainstream economics which all strands reject. The important perspective to take away is, we believe, that there is no uniform way of tackling all issues in economics and that the various strands in post Keynesian economics differ from one another, not least because they are concerned with different issues and often different levels of abstraction of analysis.
An important implication of the above conclusion is that the policies which may be rationalized by post Keynesian analysis are very-much geared to concrete situations, the historical experiences and the sociological characteristics of the economies concerned. More generally, this approach which was that, for example, of Keynes, Kalecki, Joan Robinson and Arthur Okun, sometimes and most appropriately, has been dubbed the ‘horses for courses’ approach.” (Hamouda and Harcourt 1988: 25).Of course, Hamouda and Harcourt wrote this article in 1988, and one could well argue that, since that time, there has been a convergence to some extent between the various strands, but also the emergence of new strands such as modern monetary theory (MMT).
Hamouda and Harcourt on the History of Post-Keynesian Economics
Lord Keynes
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