Portrait: John Maynard Keynes, English economist

27 July 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Portrait Reading Time:  8 minutes

Assistant Secretary, U.S. Treasury, Harry Dexter White (left) and John Maynard Keynes © International Monetary Fund

Assistant Secretary, U.S. Treasury, Harry Dexter White (left) and John Maynard Keynes © International Monetary Fund

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, CB, FBA, was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in mathematics, he built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles. One of the most influential economists of the 20th century, he produced writings that are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots. His ideas, reformulated as New Keynesianism, are fundamental to mainstream macroeconomics.   read more…

Portrait: The economist and philosopher Friedrich August von Hayek

20 February 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Portrait Reading Time:  21 minutes

Friedrich August von Hayek, 1981 © flickr.com - LSE Library

Friedrich August von Hayek, 1981 © flickr.com – LSE Library

Friedrich August von Hayek (CH FBA), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for his “pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and […] penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena”. Hayek was also a major social theorist and political philosopher of the 20th century and his account of how changing prices communicate information that helps individuals co-ordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics, leading to his Nobel Prize.   read more…

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