History

Tonight I will talk briefly about the Keynes-Hayek relationship, then will focus on some of Hayek’s insights that may be of relevance today.

Central to John Maynard Keynes (1941) original Bretton Woods proposal was an international clearing union that would issue a new international currency by fiat called bancor. Among other functions, this international central bank would finance the stabilization of individual commodity prices through commodity buffer stocks.

For more than three decades, orthodox economists, policy makers in government and central bankers and their economic advisors, using some variant of old classical economic theory [OCET], have insisted that (1) government regulations of markets and large government spending policies are the cause of all our economic problems and (2) ending big government and freeing markets, especially financial markets, from government regulatory controls is the solutionto our economic problems, domestically and internationally.

It’s a singular honor to have been asked to deliver the Butlin Lecture. I first met Noel Butlin when I had the pleasure of visiting Australian National University for two months in what was, from my perspective, the summer of 1985.

Some questions can only be answered by educated guess. The question at the centre of this round table pertains to this category. We should not be ashamed of this kind of limitation of our capacity to predict the future.

Paper presented at Bretton Woods Conference

This research project develops a much better understanding of Paul Samuelson’s life, work, and broader political-economic vision through archival research at Duke University’s Paul Samuelson archives.

Joseph Stiglitz at the Institute’s debut conference in Cambridge, UK (2010).