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Keynesian Revolution
The Keynesian Revolution was a fundamental reworking of economic theory concerning the factors determining employment levels in the overall economy. The revolution was set against the then orthodox economic framework, namely neoclassical economics.
The early stage of the Keynesian Revolution took place in the years following the publication of John Maynard Keynes' General Theory in 1936. It saw the neoclassical understanding of employment replaced with Keynes' view that demand, and not supply, is the driving factor determining levels of employment. This provided Keynes and his supporters with a theoretical basis to argue that governments should intervene to alleviate severe unemployment. With Keynes unable to take much part in theoretical debate after 1937, a process swiftly got underway to reconcile his work with the old system to form neo-Keynesian economics, a mixture of neoclassical economics and Keynesian economics. The process of mixing these schools is referred to as the neoclassical synthesis, and Neo-Keynesian economics may be summarized as "Keynesian in macroeconomics, neoclassical in microeconomics".
The revolution was primarily a change in mainstream economic views and in providing a unified framework – many of the ideas and policy prescriptions advocated by Keynes had ad hoc precursors in the underconsumptionist school of 19th-century economics, and some forms of government stimulus were practiced in 1930s United States without the intellectual framework of Keynesianism.
The central policy change was the proposition that government action could change the level of unemployment, via deficit spending (fiscal stimulus) such as by public works or tax cuts, and changes in interest rates and money supply (monetary policy) – the prevailing orthodoxy prior to that point was the Treasury view that government action could not change the level of unemployment.
The driving force was the economic crisis of the Great Depression and the 1936 publication of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes, which was then reworked into a neoclassical framework by John Hicks, particularly the IS/LM model of 1936/37. This synthesis was then popularized in American academia in the influential textbook Economics by Paul Samuelson from 1948 onward, and came to dominate post-World War II economic thinking in the United States. The term "Keynesian Revolution" itself was used in the 1947 text The Keynesian Revolution by American economist Lawrence Klein. In the United States, the Keynesian Revolution was initially actively fought by conservatives during the Second Red Scare (McCarthyism) and accused of Communism, but ultimately a form of Keynesian economics became mainstream; see textbooks of the Keynesian revolution.
The Keynesian revolution has been criticized on a number of grounds: some, particularly the freshwater school and Austrian school, argue that the revolution was misguided and incorrect;[citation needed] by contrast, other schools of Keynesian economics, notably Post-Keynesian economics, argue that the "Keynesian" revolution ignored or distorted many of Keynes's fundamental insights, and did not go far enough.
A central aspect of the Keynesian revolution was a change in theory concerning the factors determining employment levels in the overall economy. The revolution was set against the orthodox classical economic framework, and its successor, neoclassical economics, which, based on Say's law, argued that unless special conditions prevailed, the free market would naturally establish full employment equilibrium with no need for government intervention. This view held that employers will be able to make a profit by employing all available workers as long as workers drop their wages below the value of the total output they are able to produce – and classical economics assumed that in a free market workers would be willing to lower their wage demands accordingly, because they are rational agents who would rather work for less than face unemployment.
Keynes argued that both Say's law and the assumption that economic actors always behave rationally are misleading simplifications, and that the classical economics was only reliable at describing a special case. The Keynesian Revolution replaced the classical understanding of employment with Keynes's view that employment is a function of demand, not supply.
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Keynesian Revolution
The Keynesian Revolution was a fundamental reworking of economic theory concerning the factors determining employment levels in the overall economy. The revolution was set against the then orthodox economic framework, namely neoclassical economics.
The early stage of the Keynesian Revolution took place in the years following the publication of John Maynard Keynes' General Theory in 1936. It saw the neoclassical understanding of employment replaced with Keynes' view that demand, and not supply, is the driving factor determining levels of employment. This provided Keynes and his supporters with a theoretical basis to argue that governments should intervene to alleviate severe unemployment. With Keynes unable to take much part in theoretical debate after 1937, a process swiftly got underway to reconcile his work with the old system to form neo-Keynesian economics, a mixture of neoclassical economics and Keynesian economics. The process of mixing these schools is referred to as the neoclassical synthesis, and Neo-Keynesian economics may be summarized as "Keynesian in macroeconomics, neoclassical in microeconomics".
The revolution was primarily a change in mainstream economic views and in providing a unified framework – many of the ideas and policy prescriptions advocated by Keynes had ad hoc precursors in the underconsumptionist school of 19th-century economics, and some forms of government stimulus were practiced in 1930s United States without the intellectual framework of Keynesianism.
The central policy change was the proposition that government action could change the level of unemployment, via deficit spending (fiscal stimulus) such as by public works or tax cuts, and changes in interest rates and money supply (monetary policy) – the prevailing orthodoxy prior to that point was the Treasury view that government action could not change the level of unemployment.
The driving force was the economic crisis of the Great Depression and the 1936 publication of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes, which was then reworked into a neoclassical framework by John Hicks, particularly the IS/LM model of 1936/37. This synthesis was then popularized in American academia in the influential textbook Economics by Paul Samuelson from 1948 onward, and came to dominate post-World War II economic thinking in the United States. The term "Keynesian Revolution" itself was used in the 1947 text The Keynesian Revolution by American economist Lawrence Klein. In the United States, the Keynesian Revolution was initially actively fought by conservatives during the Second Red Scare (McCarthyism) and accused of Communism, but ultimately a form of Keynesian economics became mainstream; see textbooks of the Keynesian revolution.
The Keynesian revolution has been criticized on a number of grounds: some, particularly the freshwater school and Austrian school, argue that the revolution was misguided and incorrect;[citation needed] by contrast, other schools of Keynesian economics, notably Post-Keynesian economics, argue that the "Keynesian" revolution ignored or distorted many of Keynes's fundamental insights, and did not go far enough.
A central aspect of the Keynesian revolution was a change in theory concerning the factors determining employment levels in the overall economy. The revolution was set against the orthodox classical economic framework, and its successor, neoclassical economics, which, based on Say's law, argued that unless special conditions prevailed, the free market would naturally establish full employment equilibrium with no need for government intervention. This view held that employers will be able to make a profit by employing all available workers as long as workers drop their wages below the value of the total output they are able to produce – and classical economics assumed that in a free market workers would be willing to lower their wage demands accordingly, because they are rational agents who would rather work for less than face unemployment.
Keynes argued that both Say's law and the assumption that economic actors always behave rationally are misleading simplifications, and that the classical economics was only reliable at describing a special case. The Keynesian Revolution replaced the classical understanding of employment with Keynes's view that employment is a function of demand, not supply.