Keynes’s Revolution: The Evidence Showing Who Killed Cock Robin

In his 1935 New Year’s Day letter to George Bernard Shaw, Keynes indicated that he was writing a book that would revolutionize economic theory through its real-world description of an economy where liquidity and money contracts played a dominant role in the organization of production and exchange processes. For several decades after World War II economists spoke about this Keynesian Revolution in economic theory and policy. In 1971, even an American president, Richard M. Nixon, announced, “now I am a Keynesian”. Today, however, the teaching of Keynes’s revolution in theory and policy is dead, at least in economics textbooks, the writings of mainstream economists, and speeches of government policy makers, whether they be “liberal” or “conservative”.