This paper is a contribution to the forthcoming Edward Elgar Handbook of the History of Economic Analysis volume edited by Gilbert Faccarello and Heinz Kurz. Its aim is to introduce the reader to the main episodes that have marked the course of modern macroeconomics: its emergence after the...

In this review article of Backhouse and Boianovsky’s book, Transforming modern macroeconomics. Exploring disequilibrium microfoundations, 1956-2003, I make the following points: (a) Backhouse and Boianovsky’s too broad understanding of the disequilibrium approach results in their bringing...

Academic macroeconomics as it has been practiced for the last three decades has a bad reputation, especially after the onset of the 2008 recession. The aim of this paper is to reflect on this state of affairs. To begin, I draw a comparison between Keynesian and Lucasian macroeconomics, bringing...

Present-day macroeconomics has sometimes been dubbed ‘the new neoclassical synthesis’, suggesting that it constitutes a reincarnation of the neoclassical synthesis of the 1950s. This paper assesses this understanding. To this end, we examine the contents of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’...

Our paper studies two attempts at integrating unemployment in macroeconomics. The first, due to Diamond, consists in a search model exhibiting multiple equilibria. The second is due to Andolfatto and Merz who, more or less simultaneously, were able to integrate the matching function in RBC...

The notion of frictional unemployment first arose in the writings of Beveridge, Pigou and Hicks. Why did it fail at the time to grow into a fully fledged theory ? Our answer is simple. This failure was due to the fact these economists were unwilling and/or unable to go beyond the then-prevailing...

The standard view about the relation between the Marshallian and the Walrasian approaches is that they are complementary to each other. My aim in this paper is to show that, on the contrary, they constitute alternative sub-research programs within the wider neoclassical paradigm. I make my point...

The emergence of the crisis has given a new impetus to the criticism of economic liberalism. My claim in this paper is that such criticisms will be to no avail as long as the idea of liberalism remains homogenous. It should rather be considered that several degrees of liberalism coexist, which I...

According to Klein, Keynes’s General Theory was crying out for empirical application. He set himself the task of implementing this extension. Our paper documents the different stages of his endeavor, focusing on his The Keynesian Revolution book, Journal of Political Economy article on...

The aim of the present paper is to assess the new classical/real business cycle revolution, which dethroned Keynesian macroeconomics. In its first part, I critically discuss the microfoundations requirement that constitutes a cornerstone of the new approach and suggest an alternative, softer,...