<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Skidelsky overlooks Keynes's mathematical contributions
Review: I highly recommend the second volume of Skidelsky's three volume study of the life of John Maynard Keynes for the general reader.The general reader will be rewarded with a 5 star performance.Skidelsky masterfully weaves an incredible amount of material about the private and public life of Keynes in a manner that will provide the nonspecialist,general reader with many hours of reading pleasure.Unfortunately,the same cannot be said for the specialist seeking a technical analysis and evaluation of Keynes's scientific contributions to philosophy,applied probability,applied statistics,decision science and economics.It is in this area that Skidelsky fumbles the ball just as it appeared that he was going to go all the way and score a touchdown.This is most likely due to the fact that he is a historian with little or no training in philosophy,mathematics,statistics,probability and economics.Let me catalog the technical problems .First,Skidelsky confuses the 12th-13th century debate between the nominalists and the realists(Platonists) with the realist versus idealist debate of the 19th-20th century between,among others,G.E.Moore and Bertrand Russell(the realists of the 20th century who would be supporting the nominalists in the 12th century),on the one hand and J.M.E.McTaggart and F.H.Bradley,on the other hand,who would be supporting,in general,the realists of the 12th century.(See Skidelsky's extremely confusing discussion on pp.74-77).Second,Skidelsky is completely confused about the nature and construction of Keynesian probabilities.Keynesian probabilities,in general,are intervals.They require the use of two numbers ,not one.The first number is called a lower bound.The second number is called an upper bound.Keynes's approximation method has absolutely nothing to do with ordinal rankings. In fact,the general case occurring among decision makers in the real world would be of overlapping intervals.Consider the following simple example.Let probability one be estimated by the interval[.4,.6].Let probability two be estimated by the interval[.5,.7].The probabilities have very specific numeric bounds,but they are ,in fact,nonrankable,noncomparable and nonadditive.It is not possible to say that one of the two probabilities is greater than,less than or equal to the other probability.Skidelsky has accepted at face value the extremely poor analysis of Keynes's TP done by F.Ramsey in two book reviews published in 1922 and 1926.Ramsey committed the fatal error of misinterpreting Keynes's chapter 3 terms in the TP,nonnumerical and nonmeasurable,as meaning that no numbers could in general be used to estimate the probability relation.Ramsey never read chapters 15 and 17 of the TP where Keynes made it clear that most probabilities could be represented as intervals.(The reader will find literally one dozen errors of ommission or commission committed on pp.58-61 and 67-73 of Skidelsky with regard to the issue of the use of numbers in Keynes's logical theory of probability).Skidelsky ignores Keynes's creation of an index to measure the weight of the evidence,w,where w is defined on the unit interval[0,1]and measures the completeness of the relevant potential evidence available upon which to make an estimate of a probability.Skidelsky overlooks Keynes's conventional coefficient of risk and weight,c,that solves all of the paradoxes of subjective expected utility theory.Keynes was the first scholar in history to devise a decision rule incorporating nonlinear probabilities and weight of the evidence(later called ambiguity of the evidence by D.Ellsberg in 1961).Lastly,Skidelsky has overlooked the mathematical specification of Keynes's theory of effective demand that Keynes derived from his Y model of chapter 10 and from his D-Z model of chapters 3,20-21 of the General Theory in 1936.Let us define w to equal a constant money wage,p to equal the price level,w/p to equal the real wage,MPL to equal the marginal product of labor in the aggregate,MPC to equal the marginal propensity to spend on consumption goods, and MPI to equal the marginal propensity to spend on copital goods.Keynes then arrives at the following general result:w/p=MPL/(MPC+MPI).The classical and neoclassical(monetarism,rational expectations,real business cycle theory,etc.)theories are all special cases which require that MPC+MPI=1.Skidelsky's claim that Keynes did not provide a mathematical model of his theory of effective demand in the GT (see pp.537-542,especially p.540)is an error in magnitude equal to the errors made by Frank Ramsey about the meaning of the terms "nonnumerical" and"non measurable".The specialist will be disappointed with this volume of Skidelsky's biography of J.M.Keynes.
Rating: 
Summary: When you we get volume 3?
Review: A great book about a great man. The development of Keynes' thought is handled well, although some more discussion around possible sources of some of his ideas would have been welcome. Several books about his Bloomsbury freinds have emerged recently, and it is interesting to compare perceptions. I'm uncomfortable with Skidelsky's analysis of Keynesian theory which strikes me as too much of a shoe-horning of Keynes into a classical framework, but I'm hardly an expert. All in all a book to be savoured, and an essential item in one's library.
Rating:
Summary: Who was more keynesian them Keynes himself?
Review: Keynes activities, both as an active participant of the economic life of his country and continent, and as an icon to the cultural life of his epoch and to his many friends and groups of interest, is impressive. To define him is an elusive task: philosopher?, economist?, historian?, linguist?. He was all this and much more, but he was above all a man of a very practical mind and, notwhidstanding his immense philosophical background, deeply attached to the theories of his contemporary G.E.Moore and others, he had the feeling of having a mission to accomplish, given the immense superiority his intellect had over the rest of the mortals. What was to become of Europe after the end of the First World War was foreseen by him in many essays and primarily in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The task which lays ahead for him, and only him, was to warn politicians and thinkers of the impending dangers of the years to come, specially in regard to a lack of theoretical analisys to support the transition from the old economy (classicist in his jargon), which ended with the death of the great Alfred Marshall, and a new one, which he purpoted himself to establish and then save the world. And save the world he did!!! Keynes is one of this towering figures who had the opportunity to mingle himself with daily facts and change them for the better. Amid a lot of controversy and polemic regarding the originality of his ideas, he published his major opus in 1937, which was to be used against the vagaries of rampant unemployment and inflation. His General Theory of Interest , Employment and Money is a sort of tribute he pays to his father , Malthus and G.E.Moore.
In the personnal side of his life, if this can be said of Keynes for his personal life was eminently devoted to cultural interests i many areas, the book portrays some important changes in his personal atitudes towards homosexuality (he abandoned) and his new life marrying the russian ballerina Ludmila.
Rating:
Summary: Who was more keynesian them Keynes himself?
Review: Keynes activities, both as an active participant of the economic life of his country and continent, and as an icon to the cultural life of his epoch and to his many friends and groups of interest, is impressive. To define him is an elusive task: philosopher?, economist?, historian?, linguist?. He was all this and much more, but he was above all a man of a very practical mind and, notwhidstanding his immense philosophical background, deeply attached to the theories of his contemporary G.E.Moore and others, he had the feeling of having a mission to accomplish, given the immense superiority his intellect had over the rest of the mortals. What was to become of Europe after the end of the First World War was foreseen by him in many essays and primarily in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The task which lays ahead for him, and only him, was to warn politicians and thinkers of the impending dangers of the years to come, specially in regard to a lack of theoretical analisys to support the transition from the old economy (classicist in his jargon), which ended with the death of the great Alfred Marshall, and a new one, which he purpoted himself to establish and then save the world. And save the world he did!!! Keynes is one of this towering figures who had the opportunity to mingle himself with daily facts and change them for the better. Amid a lot of controversy and polemic regarding the originality of his ideas, he published his major opus in 1937, which was to be used against the vagaries of rampant unemployment and inflation. His General Theory of Interest , Employment and Money is a sort of tribute he pays to his father , Malthus and G.E.Moore.
In the personnal side of his life, if this can be said of Keynes for his personal life was eminently devoted to cultural interests i many areas, the book portrays some important changes in his personal atitudes towards homosexuality (he abandoned) and his new life marrying the russian ballerina Ludmila.
Rating:
Summary: Economics is a moral science
Review: The second part of Prof. Skidelsky's magnificent biography of J.M. Keynes is nearly totally concentrated on economic issues. Keynes' personal life was perfectly settled after his marriage with a Russian ballerina. He continued to be in contact with the Bloomsbury group, which 'remained subversive by habit, but was anxious to retain their dividends and beauftiful houses'.
In fact, this book centres on the question how Keynes came to write the 'General Theory' and its defense of governmental intervention (public investments) in the economic cycle in order to break the capitalistic slump. He proved that in a laisser-faire system an equilibrium could be formed at a far lesser level than 'natural' unemployment: 'There is work to do, there are men to do it. Why not bring them together!'
We discover that Malthus was a real influential precursor with his proposition to prop up insufficient demand by public works and that Richard Kahn made a decisive contribution with his multiplyer effect.
Prof. Skidelsky characterizes perfectly the 'General Theory' as a complex psychological drama with as main characters the life-denying rentier, the businessman and his fantasies and the victimized working class.
Keynes' ultimate nightmare was a world were making money triumphed over making things, which is actually happening. Financial transactions are dwarfing the industrial ones and there are many more investment trusts than industrial companies in the US.
The discussions after the publication of the 'General Theory' are fascinating. In fact, the debate is still red hot: inflation/deflation, the influence of the (inter)national banks, savings and (un)employment.
This book is not an easy read. I recommend readers to (re)read some parts of the 'General Theory'. But this work is a fascinating tale about the (r)evolution of the ideas of the greatest economist of all times.
I have only one minor remark: Ibsen is a Norwegian, not a Swede.
<< 1 >>
|
