Nicholas Kaldor after Thirty Years

The article analyses Kaldor's ideas on economic policy, his interest in policy issues, and his contribution on specific policies. It underlines Kaldor's strong and cogent views on three main topics: monetary and fiscal policy, the control of cost inflation, and the stabilisation of commodity prices. The author suggests how Kaldor might have reacted to the most important economic policy questions that still face Britain and the European Union, thirty years after his death. Kaldor was a prominent opponent of Britain's entry into the then Common Market in the 1970s: not on the basis of any emotive English nationalism, but rather because he believed that the British economy would be damaged by an exposure to unlimited competition from more successful European industries. Perhaps he would have argued that, by 2016, the damage has already been done, and that Britain should now remain in the Union to continue the fight for more sensible macroeconomic policies. He would certainly have been pleased that his adoptive country had refused to join the Eurozone