I came across Athreya asking this question in his big book on modern Macro and was struck by it-as I wrote a previous post that makes is sound like he's quite anti-Keynesian or at least anti General Theory-I think the idea that the two are different things is basically an illusion anyway. In my previous post on him I quoted him as saying that no advanced Macro curriculum have the GT as important.
"One obvious example of this type of useless discussion is the monumental effort assessing what Sir John Maynard Keynes may or may not have had in mind when he wrote his highly influential book The General Theory. This project took the attention of great minds like Sir John Hicks, and many others since then, who collectively tried to flesh out what was initially a series of relatively unclear conjectures. Economists should be somewhat concerned by the fact that this happened(though the power of Keynes' intellect made his conjectures arguably far more worthy of investigation than those of any other economist of that era."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2014/05/katrik-athreya-modern-macroeconomics.html
I don't get this scornful talk about 'what Keynes really meant' though I notice that this is what just about all establishment New Keynesians say-Krugman, Simon Wren-Lewis, I haven't seen him say it but probably Delong as well. Interestingly though, in another passage I just read, he seems to suggest that modern Macro may be Keynesian by definition-with regard to its focus on market failure in the labor market, investment and the means of payment.
https://read.amazon.com/?asin=B00HO102ZQ
This is quite at variance with what Stephen Williamson-who is the one who recommended Athreya would agree with to say nothing of people like Sumner-Mark Sadowski always tries to argue that modern Macro isn't in the same with Keynesian Macro. I would go further than Athreya-I would say that Macro itself is Keynesian by definition. Prior to Keynes there was only microeconomics.
For SW's reccomendation see here:
http://newmonetarism.blogspot.com/2014/01/big-ideas-in-macroeconomics.html
I must admit to being unconvinced by Mark's attempts to argue that Macro predated Keynes. What he at best shows is that some of the things that Keynes focused on didn't originate with him-as if he ever argued that. It makes you remember what Keynes anticipated the econ establishment would say about his book-first that it was wrong and second that it said nothing new.
"One obvious example of this type of useless discussion is the monumental effort assessing what Sir John Maynard Keynes may or may not have had in mind when he wrote his highly influential book The General Theory. This project took the attention of great minds like Sir John Hicks, and many others since then, who collectively tried to flesh out what was initially a series of relatively unclear conjectures. Economists should be somewhat concerned by the fact that this happened(though the power of Keynes' intellect made his conjectures arguably far more worthy of investigation than those of any other economist of that era."
"Yet no 'core' graduate course in economics at any major university today spends any time on Keynes' General Theory. And it is not because macroeconomists view real-time outcomes as always incapable of improvement vial policy. or regard Kenyesian-style prescriptions as inherently wrong-headed; far from it. Chapter 5 will reveal that nearly all our models for macroeconomic data, outcomes arising form firms and households that are price taking and ignore all else will not be optimal at all, and Keynesian ideas rarely surface. The reason Keynes is absent in the training of new economists is that it is extremely difficult to extract precise formulations from his work, especially ones that are obviously amenable to any sort of qualification. Hence, Keynes efforts are simply not helpful for answering questions of 'how much' of any policy to engage in."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2014/05/katrik-athreya-modern-macroeconomics.html
I don't get this scornful talk about 'what Keynes really meant' though I notice that this is what just about all establishment New Keynesians say-Krugman, Simon Wren-Lewis, I haven't seen him say it but probably Delong as well. Interestingly though, in another passage I just read, he seems to suggest that modern Macro may be Keynesian by definition-with regard to its focus on market failure in the labor market, investment and the means of payment.
https://read.amazon.com/?asin=B00HO102ZQ
This is quite at variance with what Stephen Williamson-who is the one who recommended Athreya would agree with to say nothing of people like Sumner-Mark Sadowski always tries to argue that modern Macro isn't in the same with Keynesian Macro. I would go further than Athreya-I would say that Macro itself is Keynesian by definition. Prior to Keynes there was only microeconomics.
For SW's reccomendation see here:
http://newmonetarism.blogspot.com/2014/01/big-ideas-in-macroeconomics.html
I must admit to being unconvinced by Mark's attempts to argue that Macro predated Keynes. What he at best shows is that some of the things that Keynes focused on didn't originate with him-as if he ever argued that. It makes you remember what Keynes anticipated the econ establishment would say about his book-first that it was wrong and second that it said nothing new.
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