Introduction

This volume of essays is a tribute to someone who has made numerous important contributions to macroeconomics over the past forty years, and who takes economics seriously. A life-long Keynesian and a tireless advocate of the importance of demand in the determination of both short- and long-run macroeconomic outcomes, John Cornwall, in his work, provides novel and illuminating discussions of a pantheon of economic issues. His contributions to growth theory include pioneering accounts (which are all too often unheralded as such) of the impact of technology transfers on relative growth rates, whilst there is no clearer and more forceful advocate of the need for permanent incomes policies in the pursuit of full employment with stable inflation. Neither can Cornwall’s contributions to economic methodology be overlooked. Woven into his accounts of growth, inflation and unemployment outcomes are important discussions of the significance of institutions in determining these outcomes, and of the concomitant importance of building economic models in a manner that takes institutions into account. Discussions of the redundancy of traditional long-run equilibrium constructs and the promise of concepts of path dependency combine with the substance of his applied economics in an equally seamless fashion.