Ekonominės minties raida: Džonas Meinardas Keinsas

Abstract

The Great Depression of the 1930s, when a thousand men would fight over a day‘s work as a common laborer, brought many changes to law, politics, and social consciousness. It also created a revolution in economic thought. Before the Great Depression, economists had stressed the economy‘s abillity to adapt to changing conditions and absorb shocs. Of course, they recognized that business cycles interrupted the nation‘s prosperity from time to time, but they saw such episodes as temporary and recovery from them as automatic. Then, following the spectacular stock market crash of 1929, the economy slid into a depression from which there seemed no hope of rebounding. Prices fell. Wages fell. Real output fell. Unemployment soared until nearly a quarter of the labour force was out of work. These conditions lasted not months but years. Although the economy hit rock bottom in 1933, it did not return to its 1929 level of real output for a full decade. What went wrong? The most influential attempt to answer this question proved to be that of the British economist John Maynard Keynes. Kenyes denied the adequacy – indeed, the very existence – of the economy‘s shock-absorbing mechanisms. He saw an expanded role for government in stabilizing the economy and preventing repetition of the 1930s disaster. Although not all details of Keyne‘s work have withstood the test of time, his general approach has left its mark to this day.