Keynes's degree of competition

Abstract

The present paper argues that Keynes's theory of aggregate employment assumes perfect competition (understood as price-taking, in the modern sense promoted by Joan Robinson in her 1934 article) in the markets for current output and for existing capital-goods. The degree of competition, to which Keynes makes a single cryptic reference, refers to the social and institutional obstacles to the free movement of resources, associated mainly with closed shops of entrepreneurs and workers. Keynes is here invoking an older, Marshallian, concept of competition. The implication is that the received understanding of the terms ‘expectation’ and ‘liquidity’ in The General Theory needs revision.

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