Rethinking the Keynesian Revolution: Keynes, Hayek, and the Wicksell Connection - Hardcover

by Tyler Beck Goodspeed (Author)

While standard accounts of the 1930s debates surrounding economic thought pit John Maynard Keynes against Friedrich von Hayek in a clash of ideology, this reflexive dichotomy is in many respects superficial. It is the argument of this book that both Keynes and Hayek developed their respective theories of the business cycle within the tradition of Swedish economist Knut Wicksell, and that this shared genealogy manifested itself in significant theoretical affinities between the two supposed antagonists. The salient features of Wicksell's work, namely the importance of money, the role of uncertainty, coordination failures, and the element of time in capital accumulation, all motivated the Keynesian and Hayekian theories of economic fluctuations. They also contributed to a fundamental convergence between the two economists during the 1930s. This shared, "Wicksellian" vision of economic problems points to a very different research agenda from that of the Walrasian-style, general
equilibrium analysis that has dominated postwar macroeconomics.

Author Biography

Currently a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University, Tyler Goodspeed was previously a Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge, earning Class I* Honours for his dissertation on Keynes and Hayek. He received an A.B. with highest honors in economics and history from Harvard.