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The Keynesian Revolution and the Role of Money: Keynes’s Lasting Contribution

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Abstract

The problems of lecturing on such a vast topic — I choose to give a personal view rather than a survey. The Keynesian Revolution was a revolution of theory not of policy recommendations. The question of Keynes’s lasting contribution — I draw parallels with others who have shaped the modern world view. Keynes produced a theory of the real-world economy that recognised the central importance of uncertainty, time and history and as such gave rise to an economics relevant to the short run — the dimension of biography. Keynes’s attitude to life and death and the influence of his philosophical inspiration on the theoretical constructs he produced. Keynesian economics gave a new theoretical importance to money, the nature of which underwrote the possibility of a ‘macro-economics’ and reflected the characteristic features of the real world. I trace the fate of the Keynesian Revolution in the neo-classical synthesis.

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© 2006 Gordon Fletcher

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Fletcher, G. (2006). The Keynesian Revolution and the Role of Money: Keynes’s Lasting Contribution. In: Dennis Robertson. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230595903_9

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