THE CRISIS IN MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS

In preparing this valedictory lecture I have been greatly helped by
hearing and then reading Bob Rowthorn’s speech to the King’s
Economists on 17 April; Paul Omerod’s dissection of modern
macroeconomics in the February 2010 issue of 21st Society, the Journal of
the Academy of the Social Sciences; Heinz Kurz’s paper, “On the dismal
state of a dismal what?”, on the deficiencies of mainly Lucasian theory in
the light of the current crisis events, together with his careful gathering
together of Lucas’s more outlandish and extraordinary claims for his
approach and contributions and those of his tribe of admiring followers;
especially when Keynes’s contributions as they see them and which
Keynes never claimed to have made, are used as his and their numéraire;
Lance Taylor’s “tome for our times”, Maynard’s Revenge, soon to be
published by Harvard University Press; Robert Skidelsky’s, The Return of
the Master (2009); Joe Sliglitz’s many criticisms of the extreme versions
of modern theory which served to justify the Washington Consensus and
its implications for universal policy proposals; Ben Friedman’s review of
recent books by John Cassidy and John Lancaster and Tony Judt’s article,
* A Valedictory Lecture given by G. C. Harcourt at SOAS on 12 May 2010. May I say how
grateful I am to Jan Toporowski and SOAS for arranging the lecture (and the lunch) and to
Sheila Dow and Jan Toporowski for their very kind introduction and closure respectively?
TheCrisisinMainstream… Page 2 of 15 19 May 2010
“Ill fares the land”, in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books,
April-May, 2010.

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