Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography.

• Author: Pierce, Thomas J.

In the Preface to this work the author addresses the question of whether or not biography is of value to economists aside from the insight it provides into the sociology of the profession. He notes Stigler's reservation - "When we are told that we must study a man's life to understand what he really meant, we are being invited to abandon science" [1, 91] - but also his subsequent statement that he (Stigler) may have better understood Ricardo's writings had he known him as a colleague [2, 37]. With the latter point in mind Moggridge aims to choose and arrange those facts about Keynes's life which best provide readers a sense of what Keynes may have been like as a colleague. His efforts are largely successful.

The author (also the principal editor of The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes) presents "colleague" Keynes through two main avenues: first by discussing the evolution of Keynes's thought from approximately 1924 to 1935, the years leading up to publication of A Treatise on Money (1930) and the General Theory (1936), in chapters 17 through 21; and, second, by examining Keynes's Treasury activities during the First and Second World Wars in chapters 11-12 and 25-30. The former endeavor is engaging and insightful; the latter a double-edged sword, informative yet sometimes detail-laden.

Given Keynes's frequent reference to (and admiration of) the role of intuition in scientific discoveries, the gradual nature of changes in his own economic thinking is striking to the reader. While flashes of intuition undoubtedly fueled Keynes's interest in certain questions, Moggridge convincingly demonstrates that clarifying and refining those insights was a long and arduous, yet intellectually vigorous, process. Chapter 17 tells of Keynes's initial consideration of public sector investment as a means of stimulating the economy and shows how the prospect of Britain's return to the gold standard in 1925 focused Keynes's attention on the potentially destructive consequences of a deflationary cure to an overvalued currency. In Chapter 18 readers find Keynes's inherent interest in financial issues spilling over into industrial concerns as he examines the impact of the return to gold (and other factors) on the coal and cotton industries during the 1920s. Under Moggridge's guidance the reader also senses Keynes's increasing dissatisfaction with laissez-faire economic adjustments and a slow but steady intellectual pull toward a short run analytical...