Author Biography
John Maynard Keynes, (1883-1946) was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected modern macroeconomics and social liberalism, both in theory and practice. He advocated interventionist economic policy, by which governments would use fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of business cycles, economic recessions, and depressions. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots. In the 1930s, Keynes spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking, overturning the older ideas of neoclassical economics that held that free markets would automatically provide full employment as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands. Following the outbreak of World War II, Keynes's ideas concerning economic policy were adopted by leading Western economies. During the 1950s and 1960s, the success of Keynesian economics was so resounding that almost all capitalist governments adopted its policy recommendations. In 1999, Time magazine included Keynes in their list of the 100 most important and influential people of the 20th century, commenting that; His radical idea that governments should spend money they don't have may have saved capitalism. Keynes is widely considered the father of modern macroeconomics, and by various commentators such as economist John Sloman, the most influential economist of the 20th century. In addition to being an economist, Keynes was also a civil servant, a patron of the arts, a director of the Bank of England, an advisor to several charitable trusts, a writer, a private investor, an art collector, and a farmer.
