Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics
by Robert Skidelsky  (Author)

About the Author
Robert Skidelsky is emeritus professor of political economy at the University of Warwick. He is the author of many books, most notably a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, and was made a life peer of the House of Lords in 1991.

About this book
A critical examination of economics’s past and future, and how it needs to change, by one of the most eminent political economists of our time
The dominant view in economics is that money and government should play only a minor role in economic life. Economic outcomes, it is claimed, are best left to the “invisible hand” of the market. Yet these claims remain staunchly unsettled. The view taken in this important new book is that the omnipresence of uncertainty makes money and government essential features of any market economy.
Since Adam Smith, classical economics has espoused nonintervention in markets. The Great Depression brought Keynesian economics to the fore, but stagflation in the 1970s brought a return to small-state orthodoxy. The 2008 global financial crash should have brought a reevaluation of that stance; instead the response has been punishing austerity and anemic recovery. This book aims to reintroduce Keynes’s central insights to a new generation of economists, and embolden them to return money and government to the starring roles in the economic drama that they deserve.

Brief contents
Part One History of Economic Thought 19
1. The Mysteries of Money: A Short History 21
2. The Fight for the Gold Standard 40
3. The Quantity Theory of Money: From History to Science 60
4. Theories of the Fertile and Barren State 73
Part Two The Rise, Triumph and Fall of Keynes 95
5. Keynes’s Intervention 99
6. The Keynesian Ascendancy 137
7. The Theory and Practice of Monetarism 171
Part Three Macroeconomics in the Crash and After, 2007– 215
8. The Disablement of Fiscal Policy 221
9. The New Monetarism 248
10. Distribution as a Macroeconomic Problem 288
11. What Was Wrong with the Banks? 307
12. Global Imbalances 331
Part Four A New Macroeconomics 345
13. Reinventing Political Economy 347
Notes 391
Bibliography 427
Index 461

Length: 512 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press (November 13, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0300240325
ISBN-13: 978-0300240320