Overview
The Great Depression of the 1930s with its dramatic unemployment rates was one of the most striking economic events of the past century. It shook economists' beliefs in the existence of self-adjusting forces and prompted Keynes to write his masterwork, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money . Involuntary unemployment was the central concept of Keynes' book. However, after having been considered the sine qua non of economics for decades, it has gradually disappeared from textbooks and research. This book recounts and ponders this demise, asking whether the abandonment of the concept of involuntary unemployment is the manifestation of some inner defect of recent economic theory or is rather due to some intrinsic weakness of the concept itself, which makes it of little use when it comes to economic theorising. In order to disentangle these issues, the author critically reviews the different explanations of involuntary unemployment that have been offered from Keynes up to the end of the 1980s. After considering The General Theory , the author studies the works of pioneering macroeconomists such as Hicks, Modigliani, Lange, Leontief, Tobin, Klein and Hansen. An examination of the 're-appraisal of Keynes' and of the so-called disequilibrium school is followed by a discussion of Friedman's and Lucas' anti-Keynesian attack. The final part of the book investigates a series of models purporting to revive the Keynesian project, namely implicit contract, efficiency wages, insider-outsider, coordination failures, and imperfect competition.
Full Product Details
Author: Michel de Vroey
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint: Routledge
Volume: 33
Dimensions:
Width: 15.60cm
, Height: 2.00cm
, Length: 23.40cm
Weight: 0.657kg
ISBN: 9780415080743
ISBN 10: 0415080746
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 01 July 2004
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
'Involuntary Unemployment will to the teacher constitute a valuable text in any course on theories of unemployment. To the historian of ideas, it displays a stimulating disregard for the cliches of intellectual (pseudo) history. To the general economist, it makes for a sprightly performance, full of position and thought'. - William Coleman, Australian National University, Economic Record 'Involuntary Unemployment will to the teacher constitute a valuable text in any course on theories of unemployment. To the historian of ideas, it displays a stimulating disregard for the cliches of intellectual (pseudo) history. To the general economist, it makes for a sprightly performance, full of position and thought'. - William Coleman, Australian National University, Economic Record
'Involuntary Unemployment will to the teacher constitute a valuable text in any course on theories of unemployment. To the historian of ideas, it displays a stimulating disregard for the cliches of intellectual (pseudo) history. To the general economist, it makes for a sprightly performance, full of position and thought'. - William Coleman, Australian National University, Economic Record
'Involuntary Unemployment will to the teacher constitute a valuable text in any course on theories of unemployment. To the historian of ideas, it displays a stimulating disregard for the clichés of intellectual (pseudo) history. To the general economist, it makes for a sprightly performance, full of position and thought'. - William Coleman, Australian National University, Economic Record 'Involuntary Unemployment will to the teacher constitute a valuable text in any course on theories of unemployment. To the historian of ideas, it displays a stimulating disregard for the clichés of intellectual (pseudo) history. To the general economist, it makes for a sprightly performance, full of position and thought'. - William Coleman, Australian National University, Economic Record
Author Information
Michel De Vroey is Professor of Economics at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium). His main research interest is the history of macroeconomics. He has held visiting positions at the Université de Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne, Duke University and the Université de Montréal. He has published articles in Economics and Philosophy, The Cambridge Journal of Economics and in the main history of economic thought journals.
