John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

His 1919 critique of the Versailles Treaty, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, began the process of turning British elite opinion toward greater sympathy with Germany.  As a response to ongoing high levels of unemployment in Britain, in 1924 he challenged fiscal orthodoxy by recommending deficit spending on public works to stimulate the sluggish economy in Does Unemployment Need a Drastic Remedy?  In A Treatise on Money (1930), he further departed from fiscal orthodoxy by suggesting that there are economic conditions under which savings do not lead to investment, and in the midst of an economic depression, the correct course of action should be to encourage spending and discourage saving.  His greatest contribution to economic science was The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, in which he contested the classical economic theory that full employment could always be reached by making wages sufficiently low.  Over and above its immediate policy implications, the book suggested fiscal tools for managing the economy and categories of analysis that influenced economic policy and analysis for decades.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)