Robert Skidelsky

Interview of Robert Skidelsky by Sam de Muijnck (Chairman Rethinking Economics NL) in Amsterdam.

   LONDON – It is an odd quirk in the history of logic that the blameless Cretans should have given their name to the famous “liar paradox.” The Cretan Epimenides is supposed to have said: “All Cretans are liars.” If Epimenides was lying, he was telling the truth – and thus was lying. Something similar can be said of US President Donald Trump: Even when he’s telling the truth, many assume he is lying – and thus being true to himself. His trolling is notorious. For years, he...

  Subjects can dominate the agenda one day, and then drop from view. Something of the kind has been happening to austerity. Two years ago nothing seemed so important to George Osborne as eliminating the budget deficit. In 2015, fresh from masterminding the Conservatives’ unexpected win, Osborne pledged himself to achieving a surplus by 2019-20 and announced further cuts of £12bn in welfare. Austerity, having been relaxed before the election, had returned with a flourish. Not only...

Come help us celebrate the launch of The Reformation in Economics by Philip Pilkington, on Thursday 16th March at the Attlee Room, House of Lords, from 18:30-20:30. In this lucid, extremely lively book Philip Pilkington offers a radical critique of economics. He does not hesitate to pulverise the great panjandrums of the discipline and he reserves special scorn for the Nobel Laureateocracy, which closes the profession to heterodoxy. His starting point is that economics is a 'contested...

   In recent years some monetary economists have voiced scepticism about aspects of the Keynesian revolution, particularly the importance of the 1936 General Theory relative to Keynes’s entire corpus.1 These sceptics have performed a valuable service by encouraging more whole-hearted Keynesians (including the author of this chapter) to look carefully at Keynes’s earlier work, notably the 1930 Treatise on Money. Arguably, the Treatise is in many ways a better guide than the General...

   LONDON – “Enough is enough,” proclaimed British Prime Minister Theresa May after the terrorist attack on London Bridge. Now, it is clear, almost half of those who voted in the United Kingdom’s general election on June 8 have had enough of May, whose Conservative majority was wiped out at the polls, producing a hung parliament (with no majority for any party). Whether it is “enough immigrants” or “enough austerity,” Britain’s voters certainly have had enough of a lot. But the...

Waarom werken we nog zo veel? Zou de introductie van een basisinkomen de huidige economie op zijn kop kunnen zetten? Wie hebben er de afgelopen eeuw geprofiteerd van onze toegenomen productie? Rethinking Economics NL ondervraagt Lord Robert Skidelsky, professor economie aan de Warwick University, over het werkvraagstuk.

Lord Robert Skidelsky (United Kingdom), Member of the House of Lords, United Kingdom Parliament. НА РУССКОМ: https://youtu.be/807CLOTwd7E

  In this paper, a transcript of an address given at the 2016 Keynes Conference in Turin, I unpick the various elements of Keynesian revival in economics and explore how different schools of economists have disagreed on which aspects of Keynes’ thought are relevant to modern economic theory. Finally, I conclude with four thoughts on the relevance of Keynes for how one does economics. There has been a modest revival of interest in Keynes after the collapse of 2008-2009 and the...

  Emmanuel Macron’s decisive defeat of Marine Le Pen in the French presidential runoff was a major victory for liberal Europe. But it was a battle, not a war. The idea that one in three French citizens would vote for the National Front’s Le Pen was inconceivable only a few years ago. Commentators have affixed the “populist” label to the wave of demagogic politics sweeping Europe (and much of the rest of the world). But, beyond the raucous style common to populists, what do these...