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Post-Keynesian

The Post-Keynesian

I was searching for The Economic Naturalist by Robert H Frank in Choa Chu Kang library - on loan. Animal Spirits by George Arkelof and Robert Shiller - on loan. More Sex is Safer Sex by Steven Landsburg - on loan. It seemed as though all the popular economics books (for the first and the third book at least) are all loaned out. And they've not been returned for the entire time I was monitoring the search catalogue, which is approximately 1 week. I ended up stumbling on Hyman Minsky's 'John Maynard Keynes'. It is no doubt a high-level book, probably the sort recommended for year 2 or year 3 economics undergrads but I decided to borrow it anyways, thinking I might learn a thing or two from it.

I might just pick up stuff to discuss right here from the book but before that, I was looking through the profile of Hyman Minsky and found the school of thought known as 'Post-Keynesian'. Interestingly, this group of economists believe that Keynesian economics in the mainstream macroeconomics academia have been disastrously misinterpreted and that the true Keynesian economics, may after all, provide solutions to the continuing macroeconomic woes that we face today, like the recent Subprime Crisis.

Hyman Minsky himself was an interesting character who despite being born in Chicago and schooled in University of Chicago, was hardly of the 'Chicago School' of economists, who believed in the power of free markets. Essentially, what Minsky would say about markets would be a direct opposite of what Milton Friedman may have in mind. The relevance of Minsky's work today is a result of his focus on the investment aspect of Keynes' 'The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money'. He tried to develop Keynes' ideas about financial instability being inherent in capitalism and extend it to today's context through incorporating the effects of policies governments and institutions have implemented over the years to stabilize the global economy.

I wonder if I'll be fiddling with much of macroeconomics in my future career; in any case, I'll be facing them in Undergraduate Economics and it should be a good time to read up now.