Doctor Keynes: economic theory in a diagnostic science

Abstract

THEORY AND PRACTICE For the greater part of his professional life, John Maynard Keynes was known as a practical man: the author of topical tracts on current economic questions, an adviser to, and an emissary from, the British Treasury, a successful player of financial markets for himself and King's College Cambridge, a member of corporate boards and a portfolio manager for two insurance companies. He was, in this sense, a part-time academic. And although he had long been known to be a first-rate economist, it was only after the publication of the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936 that he was able to secure his reputation as a first-rate economic theorist. Yet, of the ten volumes of books published in his lifetime, three (the General Theory and the two volumes of the Treatise on Money , volume I subtitled The Pure Theory of Money and volume II The Applied Theory of Money ) feature 'theory' in their title. And if we note that three of the remaining volumes are clearly non-economic and two are as much political as economic, the proportion of his economic books self-consciously styled as theoretical rises to three-fifths. Even one of the remaining volumes, A Tract on Monetary Reform , contains a clearly theoretical core. If Keynes was indeed a theorist, what kind of a theorist was he?

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