Customer Reviews

The Life of John Maynard Keynes (Pelican)

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Harrod's biography is a good read if the reader is simply interested in general information about Keynes concerning his background,where he went to school,his friends and assocates,his multifacted and varied interests and successes in many different areas of life,etc.

The problem is that Harrod never understood the technical nature of the A Treatise on Probability or General Theory(GT).He basically concluded that the GT WAS the Chapter 10 analysis that revolved around the marginal propensity ot consume(mpc),the multiplier,and the Y=C+I model where C=bY,where b=mpc and 0<b<1.A major error presented in the book by Harrod was Harrod's belief and claim that Richard Kahn helped Keynes write the GT because of his involvement with the multiplier in his June ,1931 article in the Economic Journal.The actual fact is that Keynes had already developed the multiplier mathematically years before Kahn published his article in 1931.Keynes delayed publishing his own analysis because he wanted to make sure that the economic rationale was correct.Kahn's contribution was to correctly explain the multiplier economically at the macrolevel .Interestingly,Keynes had already applied the mathematics upon which the multiplier concept was built in chapter 26 of the TP,1921 in Footnote 1 on p.315 when Kahn was just a 16 years old teenager.

After finishing this book I felt disappointed. I wanted to like it and it was recommended by someone that I value their opinion. I think the problem was I just finished "Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction" and that is an absolutely great book. This book was boring in spots and didn't explain enough of Keynes ideas. If you want to read a great book on economists, please read the book I just mentioned. I'm disappointed in the one but it just has too many issues to warrant a higher recommendation.