Introduction

Today’s Seminar takes as its theme ‘Keynes and Economic Development’. Although Keynes’ seminal work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was not concerned with the development problem, many of the concepts and techniques of analysis developed in the General Theory, and by a succeeding generation of Keynesian economists, are of considerable relevance to our understanding of economic development. Nevertheless, despite our greater understanding of the process of economic development, the gap between rich and poor countries of the world still remains staggering. In 1981, for example, there were about fifty countries whose national income per capita was less than US$320 per year, compared with the United Kingdom’s own $9,100 per capita per year, and a figure of $12,100 for the United States itself. Despite the problems that arise when cross-country comparisons of GNP are made, these figures do suggest that we still live in a world that is divided between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. And the figures serve to remind those of us who are preoccupied with the performance of the British economy that our own problems are not all that great when seen in a somewhat wider perspective.