This paper discusses how wars of ideas can be waged, using the author's extensive experience, both as director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and at other classical liberal think tanks. John Blundell begins his stimulating collection of published essays, reviews and...

This paper assesses Robbins's participation in the Economic Advisory Council in 1930, drawing mostly on The Lionel Robbins Papers held at the LSE. The divergences between him and Keynes are highlighted and an attempt is made to shed some light on Robbins' overarching interest on the interplay of...

For most economists at Chicago, Marshall was simply an input, the supplier of an approach to economic analysis. For Ronald Coase, however, Marshall was much more than this — a subject of fascination and, at times, almost a reverence and obsession. Trained in the late 1920s and early 1930s at...

Practically all of R. Skidelsky's views on Keynes's General Theory are a reflection of the many myths about Keynes that Joan Robinson spread. Basically, these myths are figments of her imagination. For instance, one such myth about Keynes was that uncertainty for Keynes meant that all decision...

In the second edition of his methodological Essay, Lionel Robbins attributes a significant role to uncertainty, dynamics and the time element. Understanding the motives that led to these revisions may offer important clues to assess what happened to political economy ever since, and how far...

J M Keynes could not respond to Ramsey’s 1922 Cambridge Magazine “article” because Keynes’s response would have required him to methodically show that every paragraph of Ramsey’s 3 page note didn’t make any sense at all due to the large numbers of errors of commission and omission....