I’m halfway through it. He raises interesting points. For instance
Also I’m not sure I fully understand the point he makes with his example about the husband and wife who have plans that can’t fully mesh. Is he saying that there are two possible and equivalent equilibria ? Or is he saying the opposite ?
ZIragt, thanks for the pointer. I’ll look into that, Post Keynesian thought has been interesting me for some time now. Do you have any other shorter links, journal articles and the like that might be able to give me some overview of the subject before I can get the time to look into the book you provided?
Check out the powerpoints and audio at http://www.postkeynesian.net/keynes.htm. You might also look at some of Paul Davidson’s papers at http://bus.utk.edu/econweb/davidson.html. For example, http://econ.bus.utk.edu/faculty/davidson/whatis%20post%20keynesianism.pdf. If you have access to journals, there’s always the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics.
There is some overlap between the two schools though I think it lies more with the radical subjectivist strand of the Austrian School.
Whilst Austrians and Post Keynesians emphasis the importance of uncertainty, real time and the market as a process. There is also significant disagreement. For example, a rejection of Say’s Law and secondly I believe Austrians would identify with the Currency School, whilst Post Keynesians would identify with the Banking school.
Post Keynesian as a school of thought is really an umbrella term encompassing a number of different influences.
In the ‘A History of Post Keynesian economics since 1936’ (I read this book a few months back but did not take any notes, so I am going from memory) King identifies two strands, the Kalecki, Keynes and Sraffa. The former was heavily influenced by Marxian economics and introduced multi equilibrium into models and mark up pricing by firms, whilst the latter, as represented by the Neo-Ricardian school has fallen out of favour with most modern Post Keynesians.
There was also the Post-Keynesians (with the hyphen) which were the Cambridge economists around the time of and after Keynes (e.g. Joan Robinson). Most famously remembered due to the Cambridge Capital Controvery.
There is also the Circuitists (though this is also divided into three strands) who are a French school of thought analyzing the economy as a circuit.
If you do look into the school I think you should remember these points, particular the broad umbrella of schools which is the Post Keynesian school at times they seem to be more unified by their disagreement with neo-classical economics than anything else… Whilst Paul Davidson could be seen as a type of figure head there is significant disagreement between him and other Post Keynesians. For example on the matter of complexity theory in economics (see Rosser Jnr. – Complex Dynamics and Post Keynesian economics, available free online.
[quoteuser=“mash”]
There is some overlap between the two schools though I think it lies more with the radical subjectivist strand of the Austrian School.
Whilst Austrians and Post Keynesians emphasis the importance of uncertainty, real time and the market as a process. There is also significant disagreement.
[/quote]
Some of the overlap is significant, though. For example, Rizzo’s emphasis on Bergsonian time was preceeded by Robinson’s belief in the method of “historical time.” In general, however, it’s probably true that many of the Post-Keynesians have little or nothing in common with the Austrians, particularly the Sraffians (Mark Blaug recently wrote an interesting paper attacking the Sraffians; it’s in Duke’s HOPE).
Still, some of the ideas about how firms and individuals follow rules of thumb could be integrated into an Austrian analysis of the short run. In addition, it doesn’t hurt to have another group emphasizing the importance of Knightian uncertainty.