This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The focus is on the size of fiscal multipliers, and on the possibility that multipliers can turn negative (i.e., that fiscal contractions can be expansionary). The paper concludes that fiscal multipliers are overwhelmingly positive but small. However, there is some evidence of negative fiscal multipliers.

Back to the future: a heterodox economist rewrites Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money to serve as the basis for a macroeconomics for the twenty-first century. John Maynard Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money was the most influential economic idea of the twentieth century. But, argues Stephen Marglin, its radical implications were obscured by Keynes's lack of the mathematical tools necessary to argue convincingly that the problem was the market itself, as distinct from myriad sources of friction around its margins. Marglin fills in the theoretical gaps, revealing the deeper meaning of the General Theory. Drawing on eight decades of discussion and debate since the General Theory was published, as well as on his own research, Marglin substantiates Keynes's intuition that there is no mechanism within a capitalist economy that ensures full employment. Even if deregulating the economy could make it more like the textbook ideal of perfect competition, this would not address the problem that Keynes identified: the potential inadequacy of aggregate demand. Ordinary citizens have paid a steep price for the distortion of Keynes's message. Fiscal policy has been relegated to emergencies like the Great Recession. Monetary policy has focused unduly on inflation. In both cases the underlying rationale is the false premise that in the long run at least the economy is self-regulating so that fiscal policy is unnecessary and inflation beyond a modest 2 percent serves no useful purpose. Fleshing out Keynes's intuition that the problem is not the warts on the body of capitalism but capitalism itself, Raising Keynes provides the foundation for a twenty-first-century macroeconomics that can both respond to crises and guide long-run policy.

John Maynard Keynes is the great British economist of the twentieth century whose hugely influential work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and * is undoubtedly the century's most important book on economics--strongly influencing economic theory and practice, particularly with regard to the role of government in stimulating and regulating a nation's economic life. Keynes's work has undergone significant revaluation in recent years, and "Keynesian" views which have been widely defended for so long are now perceived as at odds with Keynes's own thinking. Recent scholarship and research has demonstrated considerable rivalry and controversy concerning the proper interpretation of Keynes's works, such that recourse to the original text is all the more important. Although considered by a few critics that the sentence structures of the book are quite incomprehensible and almost unbearable to read, the book is an essential reading for all those who desire a basic education in economics. The key to understanding Keynes is the notion that at particular times in the business cycle, an economy can become over-productive (or under-consumptive) and thus, a vicious spiral is begun that results in massive layoffs and cuts in production as businesses attempt to equilibrate aggregate supply and demand. Thus, full employment is only one of many or multiple macro equilibria. If an economy reaches an underemployment equilibrium, something is necessary to boost or stimulate demand to produce full employment. This something could be business investment but because of the logic and individualist nature of investment decisions, it is unlikely to rapidly restore full employment. Keynes logically seizes upon the public budget and government expenditures as the quickest way to restore full employment. Borrowing the * to finance the deficit from private households and businesses is a quick, direct way to restore full employment while at the same time, redirecting or siphoning

This chapter discusses various past and future aspects of the global economy. There has been a huge transformation of the global economy in the last several years. Articles on the future of energy in the global economy by Jeffrey Ball and on measuring inequality by Jonathan Ostry and Andrew Berg are also illustrated. Since the 2008 global crisis, global economists must change the way they look at the world.

Acclaim for the first edition: ÔThis easy-to-read collection . . . tells the whole story. Filled with short, well-written pieces, the encyclopedia covers the names and ideas that preceded Keynes, that carried his work to the center of the profession, and that eventually supplanted him there . . . There are excellent and unexpected articles on the Austrian school, the Lausanne school, and the Ricardo effect. There are well-done pieces on all the basic theoretical models at the heart of Keynesianism . . . [the] volume has been well put together. The editors deserve special praise for letting each contributor tell his own story. Those who oppose KeynesÕs ideas are just as well represented as those who carry the torch for him. This evenhandedness helps to ensure a volume that is truly representative and that will allow its users to get a full picture of the life and times of Keynesian economics.Õ Ð Bradley W. Bateman, Grinnell College, US ÔThe book will also be of some interest to serious scholars, partly because it includes biographies of many economists too young to have been included in the New Palgrave, such as Dornbusch, Fisher, Herschel Grossman, Kregel, Lucas, and Robert Townsend. It also includes some very interesting longer essays.Õ Ð Peter Howitt, The Economic Journal ÔThis book provides an excellent summary of the many strands of ÔKeynesianÕ- style thought both before and after 1936. Its well-considered entries take care to make explicit the assumptions and fundamental points of difference between theories too often concealed by the parents and advocates of specific theories in their zeal to promote the universality of the ideas. There is scarcely an entry that suffers from wordiness and repetition; the readerÕs scarce time is not abused.Õ Ð Elizabeth Webster, Economic Record ÔThis reviewer found using this source exhilarating and endowed with additional interest in view of the 1997 discussion on the inclusion or noninclusion of Keynesian economics in introductory economics textbooks. The editors should be applauded for helping to preserve a part of intellectual heritage.Õ Ð Bogdan Mieczkowski, American Reference Books ÔIt is the best single reference source on Keynesian economics and will be welcomed by students and teachers in economics as well as scholars in related social sciences and government policy makers.Õ Ð Educational Book Review This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of a highly acclaimed and authoritative reference work introduces the major concepts in the field of Keynesian economics. The comprehensive Encyclopedia features accessible, informative and provocative contributions by leading international scholars working in the tradition of Keynes. It brings together widely dispersed yet theoretically congruent ideas, presents concise biographies of economists who have contributed to the debate on Keynes and the Keynesian Revolution, and outlines the basic principles, models and tools used to discuss the economic consequences of The General Theory. Longer entries on specific topics associated with Keynes and the Keynesian Revolution analyse the principal factors that contributed to The General Theory, the economics of Keynes and the rise and apparent decline of Keynesian economics in greater detail. The second edition will ensure that An Encyclopedia of Keynesian Economics will remain the best single reference source on Keynesian economics and will continue to be welcomed by academics, students and teachers of economics as well as by scholars in related social sciences and government policymakers.

Keynes was an elitist and pro-capitalist economist, whom the left should embrace with caution. But his analysis provides a concreteness missing from Marx and engages with critical issues of the modern world that Marx could not have foreseen. This book argues that a critical Marxist engagement can simultaneously increase the power of Keynes’s insight and enrich Marxism. To understand Keynes, whose work is liberally invoked but seldom read, Dunn explores him in the context of the extraordinary times in which he lived, his philosophy, and his politics. By offering a detailed overview of Keynes’s critique of mainstream economics and General Theory, Dunn argues that Keynes provides an enduringly valuable critique of orthodoxy. The book develops a Marxist appropriation of Keynes’s insights, arguing that a Marxist analysis of unemployment, capital and the role of the state can be enriched through such a critical engagement. The point is to change the world, not just to understand it. Thus the book considers the prospects of returning to Keynes, critically reviewing the practices that have come to be known as ‘Keynesianism’ and the limits of the theoretical traditions that have made claim to his legacy.

Recently, monetary authorities have increasingly focused on implementing policies to ensure price stability and strengthen central bank independence. Simultaneously, in the fiscal area, market development has allowed public debt managers to focus more on cost minimization. This “divorce” of monetary and debt management functions in no way lessens the need for effective coordination of monetary and fiscal policy if overall economic performance is to be optimized and maintained in the long term. This paper analyzes these issues based on a review of the relevant literature and of country experiences from an institutional and operational perspective.

Over the past decades, economists have witnessed with growing uneasiness their failure to explain the ballooning of public debt in most countries. This book provides an alternative orientation that explains why concepts of public debt that are relevant for authoritarian regimes are not relevant for democratic regimes. Using methodological individualism and micro-economics, this book overcomes flaws inherent in the standard macro approach, according to which governments manipulate public debt to promote systemic stability. This unique analysis is grounded in the writings of Antonio de Viti de Marco, injecting current analytical contributions and formulations into the framework to offer a forthright insight into public debt and political economy.