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From:
[log in to unmask] (Humberto Barreto)
Date:
Fri Jan 12 17:28:16 2007
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Sam Bostaph asked:
>Who was it who said
>that if Keynes could have lived to see the policies that his theories were
>used to justify he would have responded that he was not a "keynesian?"

I have been waiting all day for David Colander to answer this one, but
since he hasn't, I will do it for him.

David wrote a paper on precisely this question. The citation is:
David Colander "Was Keynes a Keynesian or a Lernerian?" Journal of Economic 
Literature, Vol. 22, No. 4.(Dec.,1984), pp.1572-1575.

The JSTOR stable URL (if you have access) is
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0515%28198412%2922%3A4%3C1572%3AWKAKOA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-9

Copy and paste if the link above wraps or try this link:
www.tinyurl.com/y6kauh


The paper explains that Meltzer quoted Keynes as saying "I am not a
Keynesian" as a "minor point in support of his interpretation" that Keynes
himself would have rejected what became called Keynesian policies.
Meltzer's source was Hutchison.  

Patinkin disagreed with Meltzer. Patinkin thought the quote "was of dubious
origin."  Both agreed that whether Keynes actually said it was irrelevant to
the real debate.

Colander wrote that, "The most probable source of the statement, if Keynes 
actually made it, is a lecture Keynes gave at the Federal Reserve in 1943."

I have repeated the statement in class because I like to tell my students that
ideas inevitably become caricatured as they are pressed through filters and 
evolve over time.  It is easy to claim that there is a real difference between
Keynes and Keynesian.  Like the Meltzer/Patinkin debate, I think the claim
stands on its own merits and whether or not Keynes actually said it is
irrelevant. For rhetorical purposes though, I hope he said it . . . 

Humberto Barreto

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