John Maynard Keynes

1883 – 1946 · United Kingdom · Economics, Politics

Argued governments should spend in a slump — and every modern state now does.

Summary^1,3

Keynes broke with classical economics by arguing that economies can settle at high unemployment indefinitely, and that aggregate demand, not wage flexibility, is the lever. He also predicted in 1919 that the Versailles reparations would produce catastrophe, and designed much of the post-war financial order at Bretton Woods.

Achievements^1,4

Wrote The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), founding macroeconomics
Predicted in The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) that Versailles would wreck Europe
Led the British delegation at Bretton Woods, shaping the IMF and World Bank
Developed the multiplier, liquidity preference and the paradox of thrift

Principal works^1,3

The General TheoryThe Economic Consequences of the PeaceA Treatise on MoneyEconomic Possibilities for our Grandchildren

How the work shapes the world today^2,4

The 2008 bank rescues, the COVID-19 furlough and stimulus programmes, and central-bank crisis policy are Keynesian in structure — trillions of dollars deployed on his logic. GDP accounting, fiscal-stimulus arithmetic and the mandate of finance ministries all descend from the General Theory. Even his opponents define themselves against him: monetarism, supply-side economics and austerity are all arguments with Keynes.

Posterity and the family line^2,4

Keynes married the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova; she suffered a miscarriage and they had no children.

3 people · 1 generations · 0 links with primary documentation

No direct line
Family
Childless. His brother Geoffrey married Margaret Darwin, Charles Darwin's granddaughter, joining two of Britain's great intellectual families.
Attested
Richard Keynes
Nephew
Physiologist and Fellow of the Royal Society who edited Darwin's Beagle diaries — the Darwin and Keynes lines literally merged.
Attested
Skidelsky biography
Intellectual estate
Robert Skidelsky's three-volume life keeps Keynes an active participant in policy argument.
Attested

Every link carries its own evidence. Documented means a register, will, archive or prize record names the relationship; attested rests on scholarly reference; contested is disputed between sources; and where the record runs out it is marked rather than filled in.

Talks and interviews

Continuity of ideas

Who shaped John Maynard Keynes, and who they shaped

Inherited from

No upstream links recorded yet.

Passed the work to4

Joan Robinson
1903 – 1983 · Economics, Political Economy
Robinson was a Cambridge Circus insider and pressed Keynes further than he went.
Mariana Mazzucato
1968 · Economics, Political Economy
The entrepreneurial state argument revives Keynesian public investment for innovation policy.
Milton Friedman
1912 – 2006 · Economics, Politics
Monetarism is constructed as the counter-argument to Keynesian demand management.
Paul Samuelson
1915 – 2009 · Economics
Samuelson's textbook fixed the neoclassical synthesis of Keynes for two generations.

Sources and references

Numbered markers in the text above point to the entries below. Each links to a primary document, archival collection or scholarly reference where the claim about John Maynard Keynes can be checked.