viernes, 5 de septiembre de 2008

LORD KEYNES
Keynes published his Treatise on Probability in 1921, a notable contribution to the philosophical and mathematical underpinnings of probability theory, championing the important view that probabilities were no more or less than truth values intermediate between simple truth and falsity. He attacked the deflation policies of the 1920s with A Tract on Monetary Reform in 1923, a trenchant argument that countries should target stability of domestic prices and propose flexible exchange rates. The Treatise on Money (1930) (2 volumes) effectively set out his Wicksellian theory of the credit cycle.
As Keynes recognizes in his magnum opus which was published in 1936, the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, his efforts challenged the economic paradigm. In the foreword to the German edition of the General Theory , Keynes states that "the theory of aggregated production, which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state (eines totalen Staates) than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition and a large degree of laissez-faire."
In this book Keynes put forward a theory based upon the notion of aggregate demand to explain variations in the overall level of economic activity, such as were observed in the Great Depression. The total income in a society is defined by the sum of consumption and investment; and in a state of unemployment and unused production capacity, one can only enhance employment and total income by first increasing expenditures for either consumption or investment. The book was indexed by Keynes's student, later the economist David Bensusan-Butt.
The total amount of saving in a society is determined by the total income and thus, the economy could achieve an increase of total saving, even if the interest rates were lowered to increase the expenditures for investment. The book advocated activist economic policy by government to stimulate demand in times of high unemployment, for example by spending on public works. The book is often viewed as the foundation of modern macroeconomics. Historians agree that Keynes influenced U.S. president Roosevelt's New Deal, but disagree as to what extent. Deficit spending of the sort the New Deal began in 1938 had previously been called "pump priming" and had been endorsed by President Herbert Hoover. Few senior economists in the U.S. agreed with Keynes in the 1930s. With time, however, his ideas became more widely accepted.

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