James K. Galbraith — The Past and Future of Political Economy–Book Review

James K. Galbraith reviews Robert Skidelsky's Money and Government:The Past and Future of 

Economics, Yale University Press, 2018

American Affairs Volume II, Number 4 (Winter 2018): 79–86

The Past and Future of Political Economy
James K. Galbraith |

Branko Milanovic — A short note on Skidelsky’s interpretation of Schumpeter

Why do we have this “problem” with Schumpeter? Because in his own work, Schumpeter shows a duality, or even a contradiction, between his often unquestionable endorsement of “economics as physics” in HEA where it is hailed as an unambiguous progress toward economics becoming an exact science, and scarce use of this approach in Schumpeter own work. His “Theory of Economic Development” is indeed in its structure very abstract and arid, somewhat similar to Ricardo’s “Principles” (of whose methodology, by the way, Schumpeter was very critical in HEA), but is not mathematical at all. His “Business Cycles” is heavily empirical but shown scant relationship to Walras and is generally anti-theoretical. (I have to confess that I tried three times to read his “Business Cycles” and that I always failed. It seems almost unbelievable that such a splendid writer and beautiful mind produced a work--which moreover he originally saw as a competitor to “The General Theory”—of, yes, such messiness and unreadability.)

Global Inequality
A short note on Skidelsky’s interpretation of Schumpeter
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Also

Liberation from the shackles of space

Full text of my New Republic interview

Lord Keynes — A Lecture by Robert Skidelsky on Keynes’s General Theory

Video, with some comments by LK.

Social Democracy For The 21St Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective
A Lecture by Robert Skidelsky on Keynes’s General Theory
Lord Keynes

Bill Mitchell — ECB should start funding government infrastructure and cash handouts

I was a signatory to a letter published in the Financial Times on Thursday (March 26, 2015) – Better ways to boost eurozone economy and employment – which called for a major fiscal stimulus from the European Central Bank (given it is the only body in the Eurozone that can introduce such a stimulus). The fiscal stimulus would take the form of a cash injection using the ECB’s currency monopoly powers. A co-signatory was Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor, Warwick University, renowned Keynesian historian and Keynes’ biographer. Amazingly, Skidelsky wrote an article in the UK Guardian two days before the FT Letter was published (March 24, 2015) – Fiscal virtue and fiscal vice – macroeconomics at a crossroads– which would appear to contradict the policy proposal we advocated in the FT Letter. The Guardian article is surrender-monkey territory and I disagree with most of it. It puts the progressive case on the back foot. What the hell is going on?

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

ECB should start funding government infrastructure and cash handouts

Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Randy Wray — In Appreciation of Lord Robert Skidelsky–Presentation for Economists for Peace and Security

Excoriating takedown of neoliberal capitalism.

Economonitor — Great Leap Forward
In Appreciation of Lord Robert Skidelsky–Presentation for Economists for Peace and Security

L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, University of Missouri at Kansas City

Robert Skidelsky — Speech on the Autumn Statement, in the House of Lords, 4th December 2014

I concentrate on one point: the Chancellor’s failure to meet his budgetary targets.…

Ever since I started writing and speaking about these matters in 2010, I have been predicting that the Chancellor would not meet his budget targets. 

The reason I gave was that the pursuit of those targets in itself slows down the economic growth on which their achievement depends.

Why? Because it slows down the rate of spending in the economy, and growth depends on spending. The cuts have hit the spending, and the spending has hit growth.…

So why has the British economy been growing at all? The answer is very largely because there are more people. The population was 62.3 million in 2010, today there are 64.1m, 2 million more, virtually all of them of working age. And more people are coming. 

Any economy will grow if has more people to do the work. The only relevant welfare measure –the measure by which the government should be judged –is GDP per head. GDP grew by 4.1%, between 2010 and 2013, but GDP per head has grown by only 2.3%, and the typical earner is £1600 a year worse off. 

So we are left with the prospect of another round of brutal spending cuts with the rolling five year programme rolling ever further into the future.

It sometimes helps if people running economic policy know some Keynesian economics.

Speech on the Autumn Statement, in the House of Lords, 4th December 2014
Robert Skidelsky

h/t Brad DeLong

Robert Skidelsky — Keynes said one simple thing…

I dashed off a letter in response to a rather odd article by Jeffrey Sachs in yesterday’s FT [£] (We must look beyond Keynes to fix our problems), which mixed a sensible call for increased investment with an assault on the Keynesian ideas which underpin it:

Keynesians of the world, unite!
Keynes said one simple thing…
Robert Skidelsky

To model or not to model, that is the question — An impression of the UMKC Post Keynesian conference

The conference itself was a bit of a sleepy affair, with most of the other talks I attended being more literary criticism (e.g several quotes from Keynes, Minsky, and others, strung together and compared with recent events) than actual modeling.

My overall impression is that if this is all that heterodoxy has to offer as an alternative to mainstream economics, then the profession is in deeper trouble than I thought.

Quantitative Finance: Foundations and Applications
Having fun with economics and Lord Skidelsky
Matheus Grasselli | Associate Professor and Sharcnet Chair in Financial Mathematics working with the PhiMac group in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at McMaster University, currently Deputy Director at the Fields Institute

(h/t Clonal in the comments)

Robert Skidelsky — Does Debt Matter?

Lord Skidelsky knocks the ball out of the park, as one would expect of Lord Keynes's biographer. BTW, "Lord" is not merely an honorific. Lord Skidelsky is a working member of the House of Lords. If only the British government listen to him, as well as other governments driving their countries over the cliff with "expansionary fiscal austerity."

Skidelsky concludes with an ominous warning.

As with “the specter of Communism” that haunted Europe in Karl Marx’s famous manifesto, so today “[a]ll the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise” the specter of national debt. But statesmen who aim to liquidate the debt should recall another famous specter – the specter of revolution.

This is an allusion to Keynes's project to develop a theory of macroeconomics that would save capitalism from the rising tide of socialism during the Great Depression. The UK, US, and EZ are facing a similar situation at present, which if not dealt with intelligently will result in regime change in those countries as the population tires of grinding under economic repression and failed economic policy.

Read it at Project Syndicate (short)
Does Debt Matter?

by Robert Skidelsky | Professor Emeritus of Political Economy, Warwick University

(h/t Clonal Antibody via email)

Robert Skidelsky — Does Debt Matter?

Trashes the government is a big household analogy of debt. Bravo.

Read it a Project Syndicate
Does Debt Matter?
Robert Skidelsky
(h/t Ralph Musgrave via email)

Lord Skidelsky is Keynes biographer and Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University.