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50 Years a Keynesian and Other Essays G.C. Harcourt 50 Years a Keynesian and Other Essays Also by G.C. Harcourt A ‘SECOND EDITION’ OF THE GENERAL THEORY (two volumes,edited with P.A. Riach) CAPITAL AND GROWTH: Selected Readings (edited with N.F. Laing) CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND POST-KEYNESIANISM: Selected Essays of G.C. Harcourt CONTROVERSIES IN POLITICAL ECONOMY: Selected Essays of G.C. Harcourt ECONOMIC ACTIVITY (with P.H. Karmel and R.H. Wallace) KEYNES AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES: The Sixth and Centennial Keynes Seminar held in the University of Kent at Canterbury (editor) INCOME AND EMPLOYMENT IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: Essays in Memory of Athanasios Asimakopulos (edited with Alessandro Roncaglia and Robin Rowley) INTERNATIONAL MONETARY PROBLEMS AND SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS: Essays in Honour of Lorie Tarshis (edited with Jon Cohen) ON POLITICAL ECONOMISTS AND MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY: Selected Essays of G.C. Harcourt (edited by Claudio Sardoni) POST-KEYNESIAN ESSAYS IN BIOGRAPHY: Portraits of Twentieth-Century Political Economists READINGS IN THE CONCEPT AND MEASUREMENT OF INCOME (edited with R.H. Parker) READINGS IN THE CONCEPT AND MEASUREMENT OF INCOME: Second Edition (edited with R.H. Parker and G. Whittington) SOME CAMBRIDGE CONTROVERSIES IN THE THEORY OF CAPITAL THE DYNAMICS OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS: Growth, Distribution and Structural Change – Essays in Honour of Luigi Pasinetti (edited with Mauro Baranzini) THE MICROECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS OF MACROECONOMICS (editor) THEORETICAL CONTROVERSY AND SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE: An Evaluation of the Cambridge Controversies SELECTED ESSAYS ON ECONOMIC POLICY THE SOCIAL SCIENCE IMPERIALISTS: Selected Essays of G.C. Harcourt (edited by Prue Kerr) 50 Years a Keynesian and Other Essays G.C. Harcourt Emeritus Reader in the History of Economic Theory Emeritus Fellow Jesus College, Cambridge, and Professor Emeritus University of Adelaide © G.C.Harcourt 2001 For details of original publication of papers in this book,please see pp.x–xii. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001 978-0-333-946333-6 All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,90 Tottenham Court Road,London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVEis the new global academic imprint of St.Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 978-1-4039-8760-0 ISBN 978-0-230-52331-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230523319 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Harcourt,Geoffrey Colin. 50 years a Keynesian and other essays / G.C.Harcourt. p.cm. Includes index. 1.Keynesian economics.2.Economists.3.Economics—History—20th century.I.Title:Fifty years a Keynesian and other essays.II.Title. HB99.7 .H317 2000 330.15'6—dc21 00–040462 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements x 1 50 Years a Keynesian (1999) 1 Part I Keynes Now 2 Is Keynes Dead? (1992) 33 3 A ‘Second Edition’ of Keynes’s General Theory(1997) 46 4 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money: Three Views (1996) (with Claudio Sardoni) 57 5 A Note on ‘Mr Meade’s Relation’ and International Capital Movements (with Paul Dalziel) (1997) 72 Part II Intellectual Biographies 6 Joan Robinson, 1903–1983 (1995) 91 7 Lorie Tarshis, 1911–1993: In Appreciation (1995) 114 8 Edward Austin Gossage Robinson, 1897–1993 (1997) 131 9 Karl Marx, 1818–83 (with Prue Kerr) (1996) 157 10 Keynes, John Maynard (1997) 169 Part III Tributes 11 George Shackle: A Tribute (1993) 175 12. What Josef Steindl Means to My Generation (1994) 177 13 A Left Keynesian View of the Phillips Curve Trade-Off (2000) 183 14 The Results of the Capital Theory Controversies and General Equilibrium Theory: Some Reflections on Concepts and History (1998) 188 v vi Contents 15 Investment Expenditure, Unrealised Expectations and Offsetting Monetary Policies (1998) 197 Part IV Review Articles 16 Joan Robinson and the Economics Profession (1991) 209 17 Fifty Years of Measurement: A Cambridge View (1993) (with Michael Kitson) 219 18 The Kaldor Legacy (1997) 238 Part V Survey 19 Post-Keynesian Thought (1999) 263 Part VI General Essays 20 Critiques and Alternatives: Reflections on Some Recent (and Not So Recent) Controversies (1996–97) 289 21 Mrs Robinson and the Classics (1998) (with Prue Kerr) 300 22 Two Views on Development: Austin and Joan Robinson (1998) 306 23 How I Do Economics (1996) 323 24 The Cambridge Contribution to Economics (1998) 334 Index 354 Preface I include in this selection, essays which have been written and/or published in the 1990s, most since 1995 when Capitalism, Socialism and Post-Keynesianism(Harcourt, 1995a) was published. Occasional minor amendments only have been made to provide consistency of book style. The title essay covers the period from my intellectual birth as an economist until the present day – hence ‘50 years a Keynesian’. In it I describe the evolving structure of my ideas and theirrationaleultimately, hopefully, in sensible and humane policy proposals. It is followed by six categories of essays. The first comes under the rubric of ‘Keynes Now’. The section starts with the rhetorical ques- tion ‘Is Keynes Dead?’, a lecture I gave at UNSW in 1992, and ends with a joint note with fellow Antipodean, Paul Dalziel. We built on ‘Mr Meade’s Relation’ to tackle the modern heresy that, again, saving determines investment in individual economies and the world economy. In between I discuss the principal findings of the research project which Peter Riach and I organised with over 40 Keynes scholars during the 1990s with the title, A ‘Second Edition’ of The General Theory (two volumes, Harcourt and Riach, 1997). The findings confirm that there is much life left in JMK as we enter a new century. The third essay, written with Claudio Sardoni, meas- ures Paul Davidson’s deep view of the significance of The General Theory against the demanding numeraire of the assessments in the Moggridge and Skidelsky biographies of Keynes. Part II contains intellectual biographies written in the second half of the 1990s. The first two, on Joan Robinson and Lorie Tarshis, are reprinted from the Economic Journal where, from 1990 on, I was honorary obituary editor until the recent revamping of the journal, when I was made redundant two years before my second term was up. The Council of the RES ignored the drawbacks of the Kaldor–Scitovsky criteria and kindly compensated me with life membership of the RES. The third essay is the memoir of Austin Robinson in the Proceedingsof the British Academy. The last two in the section concern the seamless web of Marx and Keynes: In vii viii Preface Warner (1996), Prue Kerr and I provided business people and man- agers with all they need to know about Marx. The essay on Keynes comes from Tom Cate’s fine Encyclopedia of Keynesian Economics (1997). The Encyclopediahas had a bad press in some quarters, but I think it (and its subject) will last much longer than much that is fashionable now in the teaching of macroeconomics. In Part III are tributes large and small to former economists, all of whom I knew and much admired: George Shackle, Josef Steindl, Bill Phillips, Piero Sraffa and Hy Minsky. The first two essays are per- sonal tributes; the other three were written on the occasion of con- ferences and/or volumes honouring their lives and contributions. I hope they serve the purpose of reminding readers what remarkable and fine people we have had in our trade! Modern technology is threatening to banish the old art of review- ing, at least in journals. I think this a great pity for reviews and review articles, if done seriously, serve to enlighten as well as inform. I hope I have come within cooee of doing so in the three reprinted in Part IV: a HOPEpiece on Marjorie Turner’s and George Feiwel’s volumes on Joan Robinson; a review article, written with Mike Kitson, which celebrates 50 years of the NBER for the Review of Income and Wealth; and an account of the themes in Nicky Kaldor’s Mattioli Lectures (published 10 years after his death in 1986). Part V contains a survey of Post-Keynesian thought. It is based on the entry written with Luke Spajic for the Italian Encyclopedia, but it has not been published before in this particular form. As we move further and further away from the lives and deaths of the original founders, it is more important than ever that survivors such as myself report what we learnt first hand from the pioneers. It worries me how false interpretations and nuances (inevitably, of course), get into the history of the issues and their resolutions or lack of resolution. Part VI contains general essays. The first is one which was written in 1980 but not published until 1996–97 in the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, for reasons which I have explained in a number of places, for example, Harcourt (1995b). I think its moral and messages are still relevant today. In the second essay, written with Prue Kerr, we discuss Joan Robinson’s relationship to our classi- cal forebears. In the other essays in this section, the 1996 Kingsley Martin Memorial Lecture gave me the opportunity to compare and Preface ix contrast the views of Austin and Joan Robinson on development issues; Steven Medema’s and Warren Samuels’s project, How do Economists do Economics (1996), allowed me to write on ‘How I do Economics’; and, lastly, Sarah Ormrod’s splendid series of Summer School Lectures in Cambridge let me reflect on the Cambridge con- tribution to Economics. This is an opportune theme on which to finish, as all the essays in the volume reflect my Australian and Cambridge upbringing. Personal acknowledgements I am especially indebted to Tim Farmiloe for asking me to put together this selection of essays, ‘one of the first fruits of my retire- ment’; to Susan Cross for her expert help in preparing the volume and preface; and, as ever, to Joan for her love and support. November 1999 G. C. HARCOURT References Cate, T. (ed.) (1997) An Encyclopedia of Keynesian Economics (Cheltenham, Glos: Edward Elgar). Harcourt, G. C. (1995a) Capitalism, Socialism and Post-Keynesianism.Selected Essays of G. C. Harcourt(Cheltenham, Glos: Edward Elgar). — (1995b) ’Recollections and Reflections of an Australian Patriot and a Cambridge Economist’, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review,XLVIII, 225–54. — and P. A. Riach (eds) (1997) A ‘Second Edition’ of The General Theory, 2 vols (London: Routledge). Medema, S. and W. J. Samuels (eds) (1996) Foundations of Research in Economics. How do Economists do Economics (Cheltenham, Glos: Edward Elgar). Warner, M. (ed.) (1996) International Encyclopedia of Business and Management (London: Routledge).
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