In Chapter 3 of the General Theory, Keynes sketches out what he calls the essence of the General Theory of Employment. He introduces the Keynesian expenditure-based model, his aggregate demand function and also his aggregate supply function, a concept which spawned much debate among...

In Chapter 4 of the General Theory, Keynes discusses the units of measurement he will be using in the remainder of the book, in particular his reason for measuring in nominal rather than real terms, objection to aggregate measures of real output and physical capital stock, and his concept of...

Chapters 8, 9 and 10 set out Keynes’ theory of consumer behavior. Chapter 8 is entitled The Propensity to Consume: I. The Objective Factors, Chapter 9 is The Propensity to Consume: II. The Subjective Factors, and Chapter 10 is The Marginal Propensity to Consume and the Multiplier. Contrary to...

This paper puts John Maynard Keynes’ "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" into its historical context, both in terms of economic history and in terms of the history of economics. It discusses the post-World War I period as background to the General Theory, looks at the...

Chapter 2 is one of the most important chapters in the General Theory. Not only does it set out Keynes’ disagreements with key elements of the classical model, it lays out his own model of the working of the labour market, which underlies the analysis in the remainder of the General Theory....

Chapter Six and its Appendix deal in some detail with the way Keynes is defining income, savings and investment in the General Theory while the appendix to Chapter 6 goes into detail on user cost. His concept of user cost at one point sparked a certain amount of controversy among Keynesians but...

This paper discusses the relation between law and contingency in the formation of value. It begins from a much-ignored assertion of Marx, repeated throughout his works, that the equality of supply and demand is contingent and their non-equality constitutes their law. This highly complex and...

The question of the long-run prospects of profitability and its association with the stage of capital accumulation have occupied central importance in the history of economic thought. This paper focuses on Marx and Keynes and argues that Marx’s analysis, despite its incomplete nature, is...

Classical political economy was underpinned by a shared view of the economy as a circular flow. This begged the question of how the value of produce can exceed the value of factor inputs: the ‘Profit Puzzle’. In this paper we advocate an understanding of the Profit Puzzle as a monetary...

In 1936, Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, one of the most influential books in economics of the twentieth century. With this publication, Keynes has confused and will continue to confuse generations of economists as to what classical economics means. This...