Patinkin’s Interpretation of Keynesian Economics: A Genetic Approach

Abstract

Don Patinkin’s (1922–97) story began in Chicago. He entered Chicago University in 1941 and received his PhD in 1947. He was trained by the members of the Old Chicago School, mostly Frank H. Knight, Lloyd W. Mints, Henry C. Simons and Jacob Viner. But he was also strongly influenced by the mathematical economists of the Cowles Commission. The Commission moved to Chicago in 1939 where it would experience its golden age (Christ, 1952) between 1943 and 1948 under the directorship of Jacob Marschak. Marschak and another eminent member of the Commission, the Polish economist Oskar Lange, were Patinkin’s teachers at graduate level. This may explain why he completed his PhD thesis as a research associate of the Cowles Commission. Patinkin became Associate Professor at the University of Illinois in 1948 and emigrated to Israel in 1949. He had been offered a position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and stayed there for the rest of his life. It was in the difficult context of the first years of Israel that he wrote his masterpiece, Money, Interest and Prices (1956, 1965). This book became the standard reference work in monetary theory in the 1960s and marked the final stage in the codification of the Keynesian Neoclassical Synthesis. About this book, Robert Lucas wrote: ‘perhaps the most refined and influential version of what I mean by the term “neo-classical synthesis” ’ (1981: 278).