Economic Consequences Of The Peace Research Articles

A un siglo de la publicación de Las consecuencias económicas de la paz. Consideraciones sobre los desafíos de la coyuntura geoeconómica mundial en la tercera década del siglo XXI

A hundred years after The Economic Consequences of the Peace (Keynes, 1919), this article proposes, on the one hand, to revisit some chapters of the work, emphasizing the premonitory character that it acquired when anticipating the fateful consequences that the imposition of peace under disadvantageous conditions for the vanquished would bring for the regional and global stability. On the other hand, even though there are many differences between the current situation and the first postwar period, the purpose of this work is not to carry out a comparative study but to extract from the rereading of Keynes’s work some contributions to understanding global geoeconomics at the dawn of the third decade of the 21st century. A brief analysis of the current world geoeconomic situation is presented, emphasizing recurrent international crises, the tripolar distribution of economic-military power, and the effects of the Russian-Ukrainian war. This study concludes that Keynes’ work is evidence that the geoeconomic decisions of the leaders of the great powers are fundamental to the maintenance of world stability.

Why Was Keynes Not Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize After Writing ‘The Economic Consequences of the Peace’?

John Maynard Keynes became world famous with the publication of The Economic Consequences of the Peace in 1919, a harsh critique of the Versailles peace treaty. As a consequence, Keynes was nominated by German professors in economics for the Nobel Peace Prize three years in a row, 1922, 1923 and 1924. Because Keynes was put on the shortlist of candidates, he was evaluated in an advisory report in 1923, followed by one in 1924, prepared for the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian parliament. This paper summarizes the two reports on Keynes. The appraisals were highly appreciative of Keynes’s book as well as of his subsequent newspaper and journal articles on the peace treaty, raising the question: why did Keynes not receive the Peace Prize? The appraiser of Keynes even informed Keynes that he was “one of the foremost candidates proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize.” However, the Peace Prize was not awarded in 1923 and 1924 although Keynes was declared a worthy laureate. There are no protocols that shed light on this issue. Still, the events surrounding the evaluation process, in particular the public clash between two advisors of the Prize Committee on Keynes’s account of the negotiations at Versailles, encourage a speculative answer.

J M Keynes Was Never Concerned About Ramsey’s ‘Critique’ of His Logical Theory of Probability Because He Realized That Ramsey Had No Idea About What His Theory of Imprecise Probability Entailed: Ramsey Was an Advocate of Precise Probability

Keynes had successfully applied his theory of logical, imprecise probability in his Indian Currency and Finance(1913), during his time in the British Treasury from 1914 till 1919, and in his The Economic Consequences of the Peace(1919). What Keynes applied was the concept of inexact measurement and approximation, which in Part II of the A Treatise on Probability is clearly shown by Keynes to be an interval valued theory of probability of upper and lower bounds. In January, 1922,an 18 year old Frank Ramey published an extremely poor review of Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability in the Cambridge Magazine. Keynes realized immediately that Ramsey’s conceptualization of probability was an exact and precise version of additive mathematical probability with better epistemological foundations, while his theory was about inexact, imprecise, non additive interval valued probability. Keynes also realized that Ramsey’s theory always assumed that w, the evidential weight of the evidence, was complete, so that Ramsey’s foundation could only accommodate additivity, whereas for Keynes the foundation was always based on non-additivity, with additivity restricted to fields like physics and engineering. Keynes recognized, however, that Ramsey’s great intellectual capabilities would lead him to have a tremendous academic career, although Keynes himself was not an academic, given his vast understanding of actual, ambiguous, real world decision making. Keynes thus used his great influence and reputation to assist Ramsey’s academic career, while also clearly understanding that Ramsey’s theory of subjective probability was basically one that would be generally limited and restricted to academic and board room exposition in journals and business reports. It is amazing that after 100 years there still are no academics who have the slightest understanding of the interval valued theory of non additive, imprecise probability erected in Part II of the A Treatise on Probability by Keynes or the decision weight approach of the conventional coefficient C. There is not a single mention of Ramsey and/or subjective probability in: • Keynes’s pre-General Theory drafts and writings from 1932-35 • Keynes’s 1936 General Theory • Keynes’s 1937 Quarterly Journal of Economics article • Keynes’s correspondence with H. Townshend in 1937-1938 • Keynes’s exchanges with Tinbergen in 1938-1940

Keynes Rejected the Concepts of Probabilistic Truth, True Expected Values, True Expectations, True Probability Distributions and True Probabilities: ‘Probability Begins and Ends With Probability’ (Keynes, 1921)

Keynes Rejected the Concepts of Probabilistic Truth, True Expected Values, True Expectations, True Probability Distributions and True Probabilities: ‘Probability Begins and Ends With Probability’ (Keynes, 1921)

Balance of power: The Economic Consequences of the Peace at 100

Ann Pettifor finds astonishing contemporary resonance in John Maynard Keynes’s critique of globalization and inequity. Ann Pettifor finds astonishing contemporary resonance in John Maynard Keynes’s critique of globalization and inequity.

Book Review: The End of Alchemy. Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy by Mervyn King

After reviewing Skidelsky’s ”Keynes: Return of the Master, ”Turner’s”Between debt and the devil: Money, credit and fixing global finance” and Greenspan’s”The map and the territory 2.0.” I have started to review The End of by Mervin King, published by W.W. Norton and Company in 2016. My motivation comes from two quotes:”I’m not really a model driven person” and To learn writing, you must write alot.” Policy makers, who leave their posts, write two types of books. There are those who write peck and tell books that reveal personal details of the policy makers interactions with world leaders. Economic Consequences of the Peace, the book that brought John Maynard Keynes to prominence in the public eye, was a book of this kind.The End of Alchemy is not like these books. It is a substantive analysis of the 2008 financial crisis, seen through the lens of an academic who lived through and participated in managing that crisis as the Governor of the Bank of England. That, by itself, makes it essential reading for all who seek to deepen their understanding of the Great Recession. King explores how and why money and banking have become the Achilles heel of the global economy. More specifically, he examines the alchemy that runs through the financial system, whereby governments pretend that paper money can be turned into gold on demand and banks pretend that the short-term deposits used to finance long-term investments can be returned whenever depositors want their money back.

Rebalancing Keynes's contribution

We argue in this paper that Keynes's focus shifted from an interest primarily in the world economy up until The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), to one focused on the national economy in the 1920s and 1930s, as the world monetary and trade system was unable to deliver full employment to the various countries participating in it. Temin and Vines (2016) argue forcefully that Keynes was interested primarily in the world economy, and we seek in this article to present a view that emphasises Keynes's contribution to national economic policy. Keynes shifted his attention away from the international economic system when it failed to work effectively in the 1920s and 1930s, and towards this economic system in the period 1941–1944, when the time was right to rebuild it. Given the difficulties experienced by the current monetary system, particularly in Europe, we seek to show the value of Keynes's writing on the national economy in the 1920s and 1930s.

Vicarelli’s Keynes (and today’s international disorder)

ABSTRACTThe article speculates about the legacy of Fausto Vicarelli’s interpretation of John Maynard Keynes’s work in the times of a major global crisis. In particular, it puts an emphasis on those aspects of Keynes’s “method” that Vicarelli rightly considered as revolutionary in his Keynes, of 1977, as well as in other writings. The article then turns to Vicarelli’s reconstruction of Keynes’s early work in international economics (Indian Currency and Finance, Economic Consequences of the Peace) and reflects upon the continuing relevance of the philosophy inspiring Keynes’s plans of global reform in the Forties, also in the light of Vicarelli’s (Keynes-inspired) vision of the problem of policy space at the international level.

Eminent Victorians, Bloomsbury Queerness and John Maynard Keynes' The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

The life and work of John Maynard Keynes should be situated in relation to his membership of the Bloomsbury Group. The members of this circle of friends experimented in their lives and works with a variety of transgressions of contemporary expectations of performances of gender and sexuality. Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians (1918) had a significant influence on the way in which Keynes depicted the allied leaders at the Paris Peace Conference in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). The culture of Bloomsbury queerness played a significant role in the way in which Keynes described and caricatured his political opponents. The huge popularity of Keynes' work suggests that further questions need to be asked concerning the gendered performances of allied leadership in the aftermath of World War One and the popular perceptions of those performances.

A Methodological Reading of 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace'

paper provides a methodological reading of Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Drawing on the close interdependence between theory and method in Keynes's economics, which he considered as a branch of logic, a correct way of reasoning about a complex economic material, we reconstruct the rationale of Keynes's imaginative solutions for the troubles caused by WWI and the Versailles Treaty. We thereby shed light on a method of thinking out the specific problems of international economic relations that Keynes will be consistently using (though adapting it to changing times and circumstances) in his work of international economics and diplomacy. A method which will have a direct influence on the contents of Keynes's Bretton Woods reform plans, and may be of great importance in directing European policy-makers to a structural reform of the continent's economic architecture.

The Philosophical Foundations of John Maynard Keynes's Thinking as Expressed in the Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

Investigation of Keynes’ philosophy is not a new subject. For instance, O´Donnell has dealt with this broad topic it since 1982. The purpose of this paper is narrower: to synthesize the philosophical background of The Economic Consequences of the Peace (hereafter ECP) in order to learn more about the foundations of Keynes’s legacy. Attention will be paid to the philosophical origins, foundations and meaning of the ECP. Keynes’s critique of the Treaty of Versailles was in terms of its viability. His methodological approach was thus related to the coordination of theory and practice as well as the use of both rationality and intuition, wherein his economic thought mirrored his philosophical thought. Keynes’s core lays in both organicism and uncertainty. The complex interrelations of a system are at the core of the ECP. Indeed Keynes aimed to see a co-ordinated effort on the part of nations as every happening in Europe affected all the countries and sectors. Accordingly he is considered as a realist. Further Keynes’s belief in the lack of a natural order highlighted the need for practical and ethical intervention. Thus, in 1919 he championed practical egalitarianism. Efficacy in terms of reparations was for him the road to freedom. Since his objective was to search for the truth and freedom, Keynes realized that the then current situation in Europe was a turning point in world history. If this was his objective Keynes’s language was characterized by reasonableness, propaganda and persuasion. His advanced philosophy in 1919 anticipated his intellectual legacy, especially remarkable after 1936. The first Section is an introduction to the topics studied in the ECP. The second Section is a literature review of Keynes’s general philosophy. The third Section is about the general philosophy expressed in the ECP. The fourth Section is about the philosophical insights of the ECP in terms of Epistemology, Ethics, Ontology, and Political and Social Philosophy. Section 5 concludes. References are listed at the end of the article.

Rhetoric and Keynes' use of statistics in The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Readers of Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace are usually struck by the book's rhetorical style. Since Etienne Mantoux's highly critical book, The Carthaginian Peace—or The Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes, a number of scholars have argued Keynes must have either deliberately exaggerated his statistics or, worse, have drawn on numbers that had somehow been falsified. However, on closer examination this appears a harsh judgement. Many of Keynes's statistics come directly from two Treasury memoranda, one dated 1916, the other 1918. Keynes's original handwritten manuscript survives in the King's College archives at Cambridge, in which sections of these memoranda are 'cut and pasted' directly into the manuscript. While Keynes, a Treasury official during the war, is undoubtedly the primary author, it is unlikely the entire Treasury would have been complicit in turning a blind eye to deliberately exaggerated or falsified figures. Copyright , Oxford University Press.

On the Economic Consequences of the Peace: Trade and Borders After Versailles

The First World War radically altered the political landscape of Central Europe. The new borders after 1918 are typically viewed as detrimental to the region's economic integration and development. We argue that this view lacks historical perspective. It fails to take into account that the new borders followed a pattern of economic fragmentation that had emerged during the late nineteenth century. We estimate the effects of the new borders on trade and find that the “treatment effects” of these borders were quite limited. There is strong evidence that border changes occurred systematically along barriers which existed already before 1914.

AS CONCEPÇÕES DA TEORIA MONETARIA DE JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES: UM EXERCÍCIO CRONOLÓGICO

Este artigo investiga a evolução das idéias de Keynes relacionadas à teoria monetária. Na elaboração do trabalho, o autor desenvolve a análise a partir das seguintes obras: Indian Currency And Finance, 1913, The Economic Consequences Of The Peace, 1919, A Tract On Monetary Reform, 1923, A Treatise On Money, 1930, e The General Theory Of Employment. Interest And Money, 1936. Em termos de conclusão, o trabalho mostra que, em primeiro lugar, o pensamento keynesiano move-se de uma posição na qual a Teoria Quantitativa da Moeda está inserida no seu "approach" teórico para uma situação onde as relações monetárias e reais identificam-se através da teoria monetária da produção. Por fim, a transição entre as duas teorias monetárias inicia-se com o Tract e, principalmente, o Treatise e consolida-se com a General Theory.

Maynard Keynes and the ‘Bamboozlement’ of Woodrow Wilson: What Really Happened at Paris? (Wilson, Lloyd George, pensions and pre-armistice agreement)

Woodrow Wilson’s acceptance of Lloyd George’s demand for the inclusion of military pensions among the reparations payable to the Allies under the Treaty of Versailles was stigmatized by J.M. Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace as the most notorious of the President’s alleged breaches of faith with Germany. Keynes’s damning verdict remains virtually unquestioned. This paper reconsiders the case for pensions, suggests that the question was less clear-cut than Keynes insisted, and queries his influential account of Wilson’s supposed gullibility and culpability. The paper then considers Lloyd George’s intentions in the Pre-armistice agreement, from which the Allied right to reparations and pensions were derived.

Keynes on population and economic growth.

This article discusses the evolution of Keynes's thinking on population based on an unpublished paper from 1914, "Is the Problem of Population a Pressing and Important One Now?" The paper is reported to have 39 pages, but in fact there are many missing page numbers. Keynes's "Essays in Biography" (1933) follows the basic structure and much of the verbal detail of the first 16 pages of "Population." Chapter 2 of the "Economic Consequences of the Peace" discusses the key ideas of "Population." The passages in "Population" and Chapter 2 were probably the sources of a fierce controversy in 1923-24 between Keynes and W.H. Beveridge over Keynes' neo-Malthusianism. "Population" was the basis for the three themes that were central to Keynes's writing on population. Keynes's framework shifted from a global perspective in "Population" to a progressively narrower focus in the 1930s on England and Wales. Keynes was stronger in his advocacy of birth control in "Population" compared to later writings. Keynes was concerned about the quality of population but disagreed on the methods of achieving this. Keynes argued that 75% of the world was not subject to Malthusian dynamics, and the other 25% had developed technology to relieve population pressure. "Population" sketches out the rudiments of the welfare implications of the great divide between North and South population growth rates. Keynes assumes that overpopulation in the South will be compensated for by the international market without consideration of income deficits. Keynes argues against pronatalism. The 1933 essay shows Keynes shift away from Malthus as population expert to Malthus as political economist. By 1937, Keynes had recanted and was very aware of the uncertainty of the economy. The author believes that it is unfortunate that this 1913-14 manuscript remains unknown and, if known, misunderstood.

The economic consequences of the peace: Keynes and correlation

The economic consequences of the peace: Keynes and correlation

The economic consequences of the peace: Keynes and correlation

The Allies' decision to enforce the reparations agreement in the Treaty of Versailles is examined as a Bayesian game where the Allies are uncertain about Germany's capacity to pay reparations. The initial decision to enforce the Treaty is shown to be the Bayes/Nash equilibrium of the game. Subsequent revisions consistent with Keynes' interpretation of the Treaty satisfy the conditions of communication equilibrium. As such, the revisions are strategically justified as equilibria that are consistent with the Allies' (and Keynes') discussions on how to revise the Treaty.

Austin Robinson, 20 November 1897–1 June 1993: an appreciation

Austin Robinson was the unsung hero of Cambridge economics. As a Professor of Economics at Cambridge from 1950 to 1965 and through selfless service, often as Secretary, sometimes as Chairman of the Faculty Board of Economics and Politics, before and after the Second World War, he, more than anyone else, enabled the various opposing factions of the Faculty to co-exist. He was the guiding spirit behind the creation in the 1960s of the building which now bears his name. Most of all, he contributed, unobtrusively but profoundly, to the various revolutions in economic thinking that occurred in Cambridge. He himself thought that the 1930s was the most 'creative period' in which to be an economist. For it was then, he argued, that the 'revolutions' in value theory, welfare economics, employment theory and the quantification of economics occurred (Robinson, 1992, p. 209). Austin Robinson was a polite and courteous person, certainly a workaholic yet proud and mindful of his family and friends as well as of his country, college and faculty. He could be stubborn and imperious, but his kindly concern for particular individuals and his devotion to the under-privileged of all manner of societies aptly fulfilled his early hope that while 'not a crusading Christian ... he [would retain] the essentials of ... Christianity' (Robinson, 1992, p. 207). Austin Robinson was the 'son of an impecunious parson'. Scholarships took him to Marlborough and then Christ's to read Classics. But first (this was 1916) there was active service in the Royal Navy Air Service followed by testing and delivering new flying boats. This period was to remain an extremely significant episode in his life, about which he was writing in the months before he died. After the war he came up to Cambridge, as a member of that generation of returned service people 'naive [perhaps but] sincere' who were determined to see that war was never again used to settle differences between nations. Though he obtained a First in Classics after 15 months, his wartime experiences together with Keynes's lectures on what was to become The Economic Consequences of the Peace—'a revelation'—determined him to become an economist. He wanted to understand how economies function or malfunction and what could be done about this. Both in the 1930s, when he had two spells working on the African economy, including a visit to what was then Northern Rhodesia, and during the Second World War, when he held posts in the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Production and the Board of Trade,

KEYNES, POST‐KEYNESIANISM, AND THE BISHOPS' PASTORAL LETTER

The new rich of the nineteenth century were not brought up to large expenditures, and preferred the power which investment gave them to the pleasures of immediate consumption. In fact, it was precisely the inequality in the distribution of wealth which made possible those vast accumulations of fixed wealth and of capital improvements which distinguished that age from all others. … The immense accumulations of fixed capital which, to the great benefit of mankind, were built up during the half century before the war, could never have come about in a Society where wealth was divided equitably. [Sic!] — John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919/20; Chap. II, sec. III), “Europe before the War,” “The Psychology of Society.”