John Maynard Keynes Bio

A whole branch of economics has been dedicated on behave of John Maynard Keynes called Keynesian economics. Before Keynes there was Micro- and Macro-economics were not considered separate. Keynes also focused on the short-run versus the long-run as he believed that people had "animalistic tendencies" and did not act rationally. This is most of the knowledge that I have known before researching about Keynes. What I learned was that Keynes spearheaded a new form of economic thinking during the Great Depression. He published "The Economic Consequences of Peace",  "A Treatise on Money", "The Means to Prosperity", and "The Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money." One of Keynes' main ideas was the theory of countercyclical government spending, which stated that governments should spend more to stimulate economic growth during recessions and spend less and save to bad times when the economy is doing well. Many Keynesian policies were adopted by governments around the world after his ideas prevailed after WWII.

According to the Encyclopedia of World Biography, John Maynard Keynes was born on June 5th, 1883 and was the son of John Neville Keynes who was an economist and logician at the University of Cambridge. John Maynard's mother was onetime mayor of Cambridge. Keynes went to Eton and King's College, Cambridge and started a career in civil service, where he worked in the India Office. There he gained knowledge of the government service and in Indian currency and finance. According to BBC News, Keynes became incredibly wealthy from investing in financial markets and was able to greatly improve the King College's financial position as the bursar. And in 1926, Keynes married Lydia Lopokova who was a Russian ballerina. Some say what drew him to her was his love for the arts and his efforts to improve the arts as bursar at King’s College.

Keynes' best-known work, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,” was published in 1936.  According to 50minutes.com, John Maynard Keynes argues in his book that markets having the natural tendency to be close to full employment is false, and he believes that the state needs to intervene in order to overcome economic downturns. This publication features an in-depth explanation of the Keynes’s views on effective demand and propensity to consume. It also gives a theory as to why the Great Depression occurred and possible ways to get out of such a depression. This publication is the establishment of Keynesian theory and sets a basis for how economics is viewed today.

According to Investopedia, Keynesian economics states that if investment exceeds its savings inflation will occur and if savings is higher than its investment a recession will occur. Therefore, an increase in spending would cause a decrease in unemployment and increase the rate of economic recovery. Keynesian economics also states that demand will drive production rather than supply. Keynes argues that economies thrive when output is driven by sufficient amounts of economic spending. He also believed that unemployment was caused by a lack of spending which would decrease aggregate demand. A continuous decrease in spending during a recession result in further decreases in demand, causing more unemployment and potentially worsening a recession, which leads to the explanation of why the Great Depression got worst after government involvement.

According to BBC, Keynes played a large role in the negotiations that would shape the post-war international economic order. BBC goes on to state that  “In 1944, he led The British delegation to the Bretton Woods conference in the United States. At the conference, he played a significant part in the planning of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He died on 21 April 1946.” Overall Keynes’ has been a huge contributor to the economic field and is the reason why we view economics the way it is viewed today.