Modèles classiques et projet keynésien : Réponse à Ch. Tutin

Abstract

In my answer to Christian Tutin's comment I make the following points : (i) Keynes was concerned with establishing what he called "the other point of view", according to which effective demand has an impact on the performance of the economic system both in the short and in the long run. This presupposed the refutation of the neoclassical, especially Pigovian, doctrine which maintains that with flexible wages there will be a long-run tendency to full employment. Hence Keynes was not, and could not have been, content with a purely short-run analysis, as some commentators argues. (ii) The refutation of the neoclassical theory necessitated a critique of its notion of the rate of interest as the factor that equilibrates decisions to invest and decisions to save. Keynes's alternative theory of the rate of interest was, however, not fully convincing and cannot bear the burden placed upon it. (iii) Sraffa deserves the credit for having demonstrated that the traditional neoclassical theory of the rate of interest cannot be sustained. Therefore, Keynesians are well advised to take Sraffa's contribution seriously, also because the latter provides the theory of effective demand solid production theoretic foundations. In addition some questions relating to the little macromodel presented in my paper are discussed.