Keynes: The Return of the Master

Deniz Gökçe, TCMB ve Kayıkçı Kavgası başlıklı yazımda, Deniz Gökçe'nin "İktisatçıların Kayıkçı Kavgası" yazısının okunmasını tavsiye etmiştim. o yazıda geçen, "Arayolcuların bir tanesi .... Bir başkası da hem ülkemizde hem de yurtdışında en popüler makroekeonomi ders kitaplarından birini üretmiş olan Harvard Üniversitesi Profesörü Gregory Mankiw!Mankiw sonunda patladı ve Skidelsky'nin 'Keynes: The Return of the Master' kitabının değerlendirmesini 24 Eylül tarihinde Wall Street gazetesinde yaparken, Skidelsky'nin ekonomist değil, tarihçi olduğunu, tartışmaları yeterince anlayacak kadar matematik bilmediğini, Keynes'in ise verdiği cevaplardan çok daha fazla sorular miras bıraktığını vurguladı.Tabii bu tartışma henüz bitmeyecek ve daha uzun zaman devam edecek." ben de merak bu ya Mankiw ne demiş diye gittim baktım. Mankiw'in yazısı nın bir kısmı aşağıda, koyular bana ait, önemli noktaları belirtmek ve okuma kolaylığı sağlamak için belirttim.

John Maynard Keynes. The name, by itself, is something of a Rorschach test (test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning benim notum.) for economists. More than half a century after the death of this famed Cambridge University professor, he remains among the most controversial figures in the field. The recent economic crisis has raised Keynes's profile yet again and further stoked the debate over his contributions.

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Most macroeconomists—that is, those who study the ups and downs of the overall economy—fall into one of two broad camps: Keynes admirers or Keynes detractors.

There is no doubt where Robert Skidelsky stands. A professor at the University of Warwick, he is the author of a magisterial three-volume biography of Keynes. After his years of research, he is a true believer. To understand the global economic crisis of the past year, he says, we need more unadulterated Keynes.

His preface, Mr. Skidelsky says that he is a historian, not an economist. The book bears out the claim, in both its strengths and weaknesses. ... Mr. Skidelsky would like to think that his math-aversion allows him to focus on the big ideas rather than being distracted by mere analytic details. But mathematics is, fundamentally, the language of logic. Modern research into Keynes's theories—I have conducted such research myself—tries to put his ideas into mathematical form precisely to figure out whether they logically cohere. It turns out that the task is not easy.

Keynesian theory is based in part on the premise that wages and prices do not adjust to levels that ensure full employment. But if recessions and depressions are as costly as they seem to be, why don't firms have sufficient incentive to adjust wages and prices quickly, to restore equilibrium? This is a classic question of macroeconomics that, despite much hard work, is yet to be fully resolved.

Which brings us to a third group of macroeconomists: those who fall into neither the pro- nor the anti-Keynes camp. I count myself among the ambivalent. ... Keynes was a creative thinker and keen observer of economic events, but he left us with more hard questions than compelling answers.