Kaldor as a Policy Adviser

Abstract

What made Kaldor so fascinating as an economist was his sparkling originality, his wide diversity of economic interests, and the many facets of his long and distinguished career which sometimes took him out of academic life into the public domain and into political controversy. Even within academe he was a controversial figure, holding unorthodox views on a variety of subjects. He was not only a first rate theorist and applied economist, but he was also involved in policy making at the highest level in the United Kingdom and in many other countries. Kaldor followed Keynes from King’s College to Whitehall, and they had many other characteristics in common. Both treated economics as a moral science—as a branch of ethics in the Cambridge tradition of Marshall, Pigou and Sidgwick—as a means to the end of attempting to make the world a more humane and civilised place. Both men shared the urge to protest against stupidity and injustice. Keynes described graphically in his Essay to the Memoir Club (Keynes, 1933) his own ‘impulse to protest, to write a letter to The Times, call a meeting in the Guildhall etc. etc. I behave as if there really existed some authority or standard to which I can successfully appeal if I shout loud enough.’ Kaldor was the most prolific letter writer to The Times of any economist this century, airing his views and leading campaigns on a wide variety of economic, social and political issues.

First published in Cambridge Journal of Economics, March 1989.