The Eclipse of Keynesianism: The Political Economy of the Chicago Counter‐RevolutionThe Revival of Laissez‐Faire in American Macroeconomic Theory: A Case Study of the Pioneers
本书探讨1970年代凯恩斯主义因无法应对滞胀而衰落，以及芝加哥学派如何推动自由放任理论复兴，分析宏观经济理论转变的细节与政治意识形态的关联。
In the 1970s, attitudes towards economic policy, both micro and macro, changed dramatically. Keynesianism was believed to be discredited by its inability to provide policy makers with adequate guidance on how to respond to the stagflation that followed the oil price rises of 1973–4. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan sought to use monetary policy to achieve low inflation and to reverse the trend towards greater state intervention that had characterised the Keynesian era. Economists moved with the times. Where economists had previously produced theories that justified state intervention, the trend was towards theories that offered greater support for laissez‐faire: in macroeconomics we had the new classical macroeconomics, and in microeconomics theories of government failure. This is all well known. What is less well understood is the detailed processes through which these changes came about and the links between political or ideological changes and changes in economics. These two books seek to provide explanations of this transition. Apart from being of similar length and dealing with the same topic, they could hardly be more different. Leeson focuses on the displacement of the Phillips curve by the natural rate model of unemployment and inflation, and on the Lucas critique of economic policy. The details of the transition in macroeconomic theory are to the forefront, the book being organised around different topics. Kasper, in contrast, picks out six pioneers in laissez‐faire and devotes a chapter to each of them, trying to elicit the ideological dimension in their work. Her pioneers go back to Frank Knight, as the founder of the modern Chicago school. Chicago is clearly the dominant institution in both accounts. Leeson talks of a Chicago revolution and all the Kasper s economists were based in Chicago, apart from Buchanan who was a Chicago student.