Economists in the academy wrote off the theories of JM Keynes decades ago. Richard Posner has written on why the current crisis has seen his reputation rebound with a vengeance:
The General Theory is an especially difficult read for present-day academic economists, because it is based on a conception of economics remote from theirs... The dominant conception of economics today... is that economics is the study of rational choice. People are assumed to make rational decisions across the entire range of human choice, including but not limited to market transactions, by employing a form (usually truncated and informal) of cost-benefit analysis. The older view was that economics is the study of the economy, employing whatever assumptions seem realistic and whatever analytical methods come to hand. Keynes wanted to be realistic about decision-making rather than explore how far an economist could get by assuming that people really do base decisions on some approximation to cost-benefit analysis.
Via The Situationist. Posner's essay here.
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