Post Keynesian Economics in Cambridge

John E. King

Introduction

In this chapter I draw on the substantial secondary literature on the first generation of Cambridge Post Keynesians, which was itself informed by the extensive unpublished correspondence and other manuscript evidence left by Richard Goodwin, Richard Kahn, Nicholas Kaldor, Joan Robinson and Piero Sraffa, together with their correspondence with the American Post Keynesian, Sidney Weintraub. First, in Section 2, I deal with some tricky questions of terminology. Then, in Section 3, I outline the work of the Cambridge Post Keynesians before the death of John Maynard Keynes in 1946. Section 4 assesses their achievements in the next 10 years, while Section 5 is concerned with the reasons why the ensuing decade and a half did not constitute a Golden Age for them, as might reasonably have been predicted in 1956. Ending my story in 1973—the publication date of the important but unsuccessful introductory textbook by Joan Robinson and John Eatwell—in Section 6, I try to explain the failure of the Cambridge Post Keynesians. A brief epilogue is provided in Section 7.

I am grateful to Joseph Halevi, Geoff Harcourt and Jan Toporowski for comments on an earlier draft; they have no responsibility for remaining errors of fact and interpretation.

J.E. King (*)

Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University and Honorary Professor, Federation University, Australia e-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

R.A. Cord (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to Cambridge Economics,

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-41233-1_7