Did Keynes Have Any Good Ideas?

I have presented a mainly negative assessment of Keynes on this blog.  I will stand by that assessment, especially the Keynes from "The End of Laissez Faire" and beyond.  But that doesn't mean he didn't say somethings that were valuable.  A blind squirrel can find a nut every once in a while.  But I do follow the judgement of Knight regarding Keynes that what is new isn't true, and what is true isn't new.

That said, Arnold Kling has an nice discussion of the different approaches to probability and the type of economics that follows from it.  This is an important discussion for thinking hard about economics, its method and methodology, and its basic practice.  In our essay "High Priests and Lowly Philosophers" Pete, Chris and I argue that a discipline that asks itself to consistently produce results which it cannot produce threatens to corrupt its practice.  Modern economics we argue has in fact done that.

Comments

[Barkley Rosser]

So, Pete, does this mean that you think that the Treatise on Probability might contain some things that were both new and true?

[Mario Rizzo]

Correct me if I am wrong. But my impression is that Keynes repudiated most of the Treatise on Probability.

[Sameer Parekh]

"in the long run, we are all dead"

"the market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent"

hey, check that out. *TWO* ideas from Keynes that are good.

[Danny Shahar]

That essay immediately makes me think of Socrates' debate with Gorgias...followup, anyone?

[James]

The man in video.

http://www.movietone.com/N_search.cfm?ActionFlag=back2ResultsView&start=1&pageStart=1&totalRecords=7&V_DateType=1&V_DECADE=1929&V_FromYear=1928&V_QualifySubject=&V_storyNumber=&V_TermsToOmit=&V_ToYear=1980&V_searchType=1&V_MainSubject=keynes&V_Year=1928&V_resultsPerPage=10

[Mario Rizzo]

Thanks, James. The video is extremely interesting.

[BBB]

Rizzo: "Correct me if I am wrong. But my impression is that Keynes repudiated most of the Treatise on Probability."

Could you elaborate on this please? Where did he repudiate? What did he say?

Also, does anyone think he is wrong?!!

[Mario Rizzo]

BBB,
I said "impression." I remember reading *somewhere* that he thought his logical conception of proabability in the Treatise was wrong. (I can't remember where or the details.) He went on to a subjective theory in the General Theory and thereafter.

[Mario Rizzo]

On the video of Keynes: The second time I listened to it without watching it. Keynes sounded like Charlie Chaplin (in the talkies, of course). Odd. Maybe they came from the same part of England.

[linden st.]

Raivo Pommer
[email protected]

Die Linde-Aktien krise

Eine präzise Geschäftsprognose für das laufende Jahr wagte die Linde-Führung mit Verweis auf die unsichere weltwirtschaftliche Lage nicht. Umsatz und Ergebnis könnten 2009 leicht über oder auf dem Niveau von 2008 liegen. „Wir müssen aber auch einen Rückgang einkalkulieren“, sagte Reitzle. Erst in der zweiten Jahreshälfte werde sich der Umsatz- und Ergebnistrend abhängig von der Nachfrage verfestigen.

Analysten gehen im Durchschnitt von einem leichten Umsatzwachstum um 0,7 Prozent und einem Rückgang des operativen Ergebnisses im ähnlichen Umfang aus. Trotz der zu erwartenden Nachfrageschwäche will Linde sich im Gasegeschäft weiter besser entwickeln als der Markt und die Produktivität erhöhen. Die Planungen für 2009 reichten von einem leichten Umsatz- und Ergebnisanstieg bis hin zu einem Umsatz- und Ergebnisrückgang, erklärte Reitzle.

[Barkley Rosser]

Mario,

Sorry to get back to you so late. I am not aware of Keynes repudiating the TOP. It is generally thought that when he declared on long-term, fundamental uncertainty in the GT, he was pretty much reflecting arguments made in the TOP.

The TOP is in my view a very sophisticated work, more so than Knight's work also published in 1921. He had a pretty strongly subjectivist position from the beginning, but he allows for the possibility of "objective risk" in the TOP, particuarly for the case of a "fair coin," with a variety of intermediate cases possible between that and the endpoint of "fundamental uncertainty" in which it is meaningless to even consider the concept of a probability distribution being applicable or relevant.