It was because Keynes read Malthus's letters to Ricardo in late 1932 that he eventually focused on effective demand in the General Theory. Because of his reading of Malthus, Keynes attacked Say's Law and wrote the General Theory to establish variations in effective demand as the major cause of...

Since the publication of The General Theory, pre-Keynesian economics has been labelled “classical,” but what that classical economics actually consisted of is now virtually an unknown. There is, instead, a straw-man caricature most economists absorb through a form of academic osmosis but...

This article deals with three overlapping issues. The first is the enormous role played by the American economist, Harlan McCracken, in the development of the ideas underlying the General Theory and in particular his role as the source of the phrase 'supply creates its own demand'. The paper...

This article contains a previously undocumented and unpublished letter from John Maynard Keynes that was written during the early stages of his writing the General Theory. The letter was to the American economist Harlan Linneus McCracken and dated 31 August 1933. The letter was only discovered...