The 1930s: Robertsonian Theory and Policy in the Decade of Keynes

The 1930s proved to be another crowded and eventful decade for Robertson. It opened with his appearance as an expert witness before a committee set up by the government to enquire into possible financial means of alleviating the depressed state of British industry; saw the publication of two articles that, respectively, refined his ideas on saving behaviour and recast his theory of fluctuation in interest rate terms; gave him the opportunity for another sojourn abroad, though this time on official business; presented him with his greatest professional — and personal — challenge when Keynes published his The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936; observed him in the same year, in effect, hailed as one of the world’s leading economists; saw his counsel being sought by national and international official bodies; found him in conflict as collegiality in the Cambridge faculty broke down in the fervour of the Keynesian Revolution and, finally, witnessed his departure from Cambridge for greener pastures in London. It was inevitably the controversy with Keynes that came to colour views of the decade, largely because of the long shadow it cast and this will, in consequence, loom large in what is to follow. This was not, however, the whole story and as indicated above there is much else of interest and importance.