A Critical Essay on Modern Macroeconomic Theory [antikvár]

Preface This book has had a very long gestation. For years we have been asked by colleagues to tell them the date of the blessed event. But the miles that separated us, along with many other obligations and intellectual preoccupations, simply made it impossible to speed the birth. Now that it has happened, its date of conception is easily discerned. We decided on this joint venture when we found that we shared the same unease with the "New Classical Macroeconomics" that was then just becoming dominant. No doubt the fact that we had both become economists in the Keynesian era partially explained this feeling. But we also both regarded ourselves as neoclassical economists in the sense that we required theories of the economy to be firmly based on the rationality of agents and on decentralized modes of economic communication among them. Indeed it was this general approach that led us to the view that the new macroeconomists were claiming much more than could be deduced from fundamental neoclassical principles. We thus set out to show this. We hope to have succeeded at least in stirring up doubts in uncommitted minds and perhaps even among the faithful. Inevitably each of us contributed a little more to some chapters and a little less to others. Between many short periods when we were able to be together and a lot of correspondence at other times, however, the book must be regarded as a true joint product. The University of Siena made it possible for us to work together in ideal surroundings for some five weeks. We were awarded McDonnell Fellowships at the World Institute of Development Economics Research (WIDER) in Helsinki, which allowed us two further periods of day-to-day collaboration and argument. We thank both institutions for these indispensable opportunities. Leah Modigliani did splendid work in programming and simulating the sorts of model we were working toward in chapter 2. We eventually learned to do without the simulations, but we