From Keynes to Post-Keynesian Economics

Keynes is unanimously considered as the ‘father’ of modern macroeconomics, and his followers have endeavoured to emphasize the crucial role played by macroeconomic concepts in seeking a theory capable of explaining both the orderly working of our economies and the insurgence of pathological states leading to the burst of economic and financial crises. Their interpretation of Keynes’s analysis, however, is not univocal, and some important differences exist between their approaches and the models they advocate. A classification of their contributions in the different schools of thought that call themselves Keynesian is not always easy and is meaningful only to the extent that it helps one to better understand the alternatives offered by each school. In this chapter, we will analyse the contributions of Keynesian, New Keynesian, and post-Keynesian economics in order to verify if they succeed in reaching a better understanding of the origin of crises than their neoclassical counterpart. In particular, we will show that, despite their emphasis on the role played by monetary disturbances and market imperfections, Keynesian economists of all schools fail to reach this goal.