Essays on Economic Stability and Growth

"The essays brought together in this volume have one common feature. They are the product of intellectual revolution set in train by the publication of J. M. Keynes’ General Theory of Em- ployment^ Interest and Money in 1936. In retrospect, the revolutionary impact of that book lay not so much in its policy implications as in its success in forging a new instrument of thought. It provided a new way of approaching the economic problem — ^focussing attention on the relationships between a limited number of strategic aggregates — ^which proved extraordinarily potent in stimulating further speculation along paths that have brought economists progressively closer to understanding how capitalist economies work. Ideas are like living organisms: while they are alive they gradually but inevitably change shape, colour or structure — there can never be any finality about them. When they become frozen and attain the status of a rigid doctrine it is a sure sign that their force is spent. Creative insight cannot survive the icy touch of established orthodoxy." Nicholas Kaldor