This book explains how standard micro-founded macroeconomics is misguided and proposes an alternative method based on statistical physics. The Great Recession following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2015 amply demonstrated that mainstream micro-founded macroeconomics was in trouble. The new approach advanced in this book reasonably explains important macro-problems such as employment, business cycles, growth, and inflation/deflation. The key concept is demand failures, which modern micro-founded macroeconomics has ignored. "It (Chapter 3) captures analytically a good part of the intuition that underlies the Keynesian economics of people like Tobin and me." Robert Solow, Emeritus Institute Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1987 "Professor Hiroshi Yoshikawa provides a unique synthesis of statistical physics and macro-economic theory in order to confront the dismal failure in economics and in finance to understand how an economy or a financial market works, given the heterogeneous decision making of many different individual interacting actors. Economics has failed in this regard with the naive and often misleading concept of "representative agents." The author presents many insights on the historical development, concepts, and errors made by the most illustrious economists in the past. This book should be essential readings for any economics students as well as academic researchers and policy makers, who should learn to bring back good-sense thinking in their impactful decisions." Didier Sornette, Professor on the Chair of Entrepreneurial Risks at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich).

This book explains how standard micro-founded macroeconomics is misguided and proposes an alternative method based on statistical physics. The Great Recession following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2015 amply demonstrated that mainstream micro-founded macroeconomics was in trouble. The new approach advanced in this book reasonably explains important macro-problems such as employment, business cycles, growth, and inflation/deflation. The key concept is demand failures, which modern micro-founded macroeconomics has ignored. “It (Chapter 3) captures analytically a good part of the intuition that underlies the Keynesian economics of people like Tobin and me.” Robert Solow, Emeritus Institute Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1987 “Professor Hiroshi Yoshikawa provides a unique synthesis of statistical physics and macro-economic theory in order to confront the dismal failure in economics and in finance to understand how an economy or a financial market works, given the heterogeneous decision making of many different individual interacting actors. Economics has failed in this regard with the naive and often misleading concept of “representative agents.” The author presents many insights on the historical development, concepts, and errors made by the most illustrious economists in the past. This book should be essential readings for any economics students as well as academic researchers and policy makers, who should learn to bring back good-sense thinking in their impactful decisions.” Didier Sornette, Professor on the Chair of Entrepreneurial Risks at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich)

'Without doubt, Keynes was a complex, many-sided genius whose analyses were constantly playing catch-up with his intuition. Amadeo's book is indeed a very important contribution to an enhanced understanding of this process as it pertains to Keynes's two premier contributions to economic theory - the TM [Treatise on Money] and the GT [General Theory].' - Richard X. Chase, Journal of Economic Issues 'I think that this is an outstanding piece of work, doing an excellent job of tracing the evolution of Keynes's own thought and questioning the conventional interpretation of the transition from the Treatise on Money to the General Theory.' - Lance Taylor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US

Considering ideas from various economic paradigms, namely post-Keynesian, neo-Ricardian, and neo-Marxian, this book discusses the importance of money to Keynes's analysis of effective demand and income distribution. It also considers the connections between relative prices and income distribution.

The standard view of the economics profession is that Keynes was a brilliant, intuitive, non-rigorous innovator who was unable to apply formal mathematical analysis in his work. These essays show that Keynes backed up his "intuitions" with a rigorous mathematical and logical supporting analysis which has been overlooked by the economics profession for 70 years.The most likely reason that this occurred is that the ECONOMICS PROFESSION HAS ACCEPTED AS TRUE A NUMBER OF CANARDS CONCOCTED BY RICHARD KAHN, JOAN ROBINSON, AND AUSTIN ROBINSON that claimed that Keynes was a poor mathematician by 1927, who had never taken the 20 minutes that were necessary to master the theory of value(microeconomics).The result was that Keynes made all kinds of mathematical errors in his analysis of the aggregate supply function, Z, that his mentor, Richard Kahn, was not able to catch because Keynes had published the book prematurely. This is an abridged edition of my 2004 book, " Essays on J M Keynes and..." that concentrates on Keynes& acute; s mathematical modeling of his theory of effective demand in chapters 20 and 21 of his General Theory(1936).I have added three new essays.The fundamental result of the book is to demonstrate mathematically that Keynes had a complete microeconomic foundation for his macroeconomic theory built on the theory of purely competitive firms.There are two different but complementary models in the GT.They are the Y-Multiplier model of chapter 10[Y=PO; Y=C+I=bY(or C=a+bY)+(1-b)Y], where Y is actual or realized nominal aggregate demand and P is the actual price level, and the expected D-Z model of chapters 3,20, and 21[D=pO and Z=wN+P], where p is the expected price, D is the expected, nominal aggregate demand, and P is the expected economic profit.This model is explicitly discussed by Keynes in straightforward English in chapter 3 and mathematically analyzed in chapters 20 and 21.Any reader who can integrate the derivatives presented by Keynes in ft.2, pp.55-56 or fts.1 and 2 on p.283 of the GT, can obtain this model.Keynes puts both of his models together to obtain his generalized version of classical and neoclassical theory, w/p=mpl/(mpc+mpi), where mpl is the marginal product of labor in the aggregate derived from an aggregated neoclassical production function(pp.283,285 of the GT), w/p is the expected real wage, mpc is the marginal propensity to spend on consumption goods, and mpi is the marginal propensity to spend on investment goods.If mpc+mpi=mpc+mps=1, where mps is the marginal propensity to save, Keynes& acute; s general result simplifies to the standard neoclassical result that w/p=mpl defines a full employment equilibrium with only frictional and voluntary unemployment.On the other hand, if mpc+mpi< 1, one of a number of possible unemployment equilibriums occurs which labor, in the aggregate, will be unable to eliminate because, in this case, the money wage must be increased, not decreased.Keynes is the first economist in history to analyze a set of stable, macroscopic, multiple equilibria.The technical result is discussed in literary fashion on pp.261-262 of the GT in chapter 19 for those 1930& acute; s economists who lacked mathematical training in the differential and integral calculus.Keynes would be shocked to discover that the economics profession has, for the last 70 years contended either that (a)there is no mathematical model of Keynes& acute; s theory in the GT that incorporates microeconomic foundations or(b)there is a model in the GT, but it is filled with all types of mathematical errors.Anyone trained in calculus at the lower division, undergraduate level can discover for himself that both (a) and (b) are false.

This book proposes that the coordination problems lies at the heart of Keynes' economics and argues that Keynes' message got lost in the post-war period. The text develops an extension of Keynes' ideas within a general equilibrium framework and within alternative frameworks such as Austrian economics. It is demonstrated that in the absence of a co-ordinating device like the Walrasian auctioneer or in the presence of uncertainty, co-ordination can no longer be superimposed. This ultimately implies that apart from some notable exceptions, the Keynesian revolution was in fact stifled at birth because the validity of the central concepts of microeconomics have never been challenged.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of Keynes’ contributions to macroeconomics and offers an in-depth analysis of the contested legacy of The General Theory, a book that marked the emergence of modern macroeconomics from the earlier heritage of monetary theory and business cycle and analysis.