Public Works as an Employment Policy

Abstract

FEW economic questions have been more debated than the efficacy or otherwise of public works as a cure for unemployment. The contemporary arguments of the interwar years and the results of recent historical research have been surveyed critically by Garside [39], Middleton [104: 92–5, 144–72] and Peden [118] and the limited space here may therefore be devoted to two issues: (a) the development of Keynes’s ideas, and the Treasury’s response; and (b) the possible effects of implementing the policies which Keynes advocated.