Recent Developments in Post-Keynesian Economics.

• Author: Dugger, William M.

This is a collection of papers given at meetings in the United Kingdom of the Post-Keynesian Study Group. The Group was established in 1988 with a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom. The collection begins with an introduction by the editors. The introduction describes the elements of the post-Keynesian approach and differentiates it from neoclassical economics. The post-Keynesians try to root their theories in economic history and institutions. They emphasize the importance of class interests and power in a world of imperfectly competitive markets, giant multinationals, and credit (endogenous) money. They formulate alternative theories of price-setting, tax incidence, and market structure. They are continuing the work of Keynes, Kaldor, Kalecki, Robinson, and others. I find them to be fascinating, a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stale room.

The first paper is "Human Logic in Keynes's Thought: Escape from Cartesian Vice." The author is Bill Gerrard. Gerrard explains that Keynes revolted against formalism as a purely rational and contemplative approach to knowledge. Keynes also objected to the excessive use of logical deduction and mathematical method. The Cartesian vice from which Keynes escaped was an excessive belief in the rational nature of the world and of our knowledge of it. Keynes believed, instead, that our knowledge of the world was inherently vague and provisional because the future is always unknowable and our knowledge of the present always incomplete. And so Keynes relied on F. P. Ramsey's distinction between formal logic and human logic to formulate his own approach to knowing and acting. Keynes's approach relied on human logic, not formal logic.

In the second paper, "From Keynes's Vision to Keynesian Economics," by Athol Fitzgibbons, Keynes's ethical and practical approach to economic policy in an uncertain world is shown to be different from the deterministic models of the economics textbooks. The paper is painfully short but also instructive in laying out the fundamentals of Keynes's vision.

Suzanne W. Helburn contributed the third paper, "On Keynes's Ethics." Helburn explains that Keynes was neither a utilitarian nor an act-consequentialist in his ethics. Instead, his ethics partake more of the classical Greek search for virtue as the foundation of a moral public life in society. In his ethics of virtue, the influence on Keynes of Edmund Burke's profoundly conservative...