Anonymous Flattery: Keynes

Commenting on my Bruce Bartlett post, Anonymous asks:

Can you recommend a book on Keynesian economics suitable for an adult with a financial services background and an MBA? I want something more detailed than a "Dummy's Guide to" but not something that will cause me to research lots of things to understand each chapter (It's been 20+ years since MBA school and I barely remember the Black & Sholes option pricing model....)

Ha! That's one of those questions usually asked of people far above my pay grade, but let me give it a thought. I suppose a simple answer is that the Bartlett book itself, on Keynes (unlike supply side) is actually quite wonderful--deft and accessible without great sacrifice of technical content.

The next point would be to stress that Keynes himself never intended to be that-all technical. It was his "friends" (from which heaven save me) who dressed it up iin the full regalia of academic geometry. Beyond that--if you are ready for a bit more technicality, I suspect you might be pleasantly surprised at how accessible the average textbook has become since your time in school (a triumph of the free market?). And needless to say, no reason at all the plunk down the big bux for a new edition--on this topic as with so many others, a used second hand, available for pocket change at Amazon, etc., will suit you just fine. Example: I don't have a macro text at hand at the moment but I find a perfectly readable presentation in my copy of Frederic S. Mishkin, The Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets (8th ed.)--which as it happens, I picked up used on Amazon myself.

Beyond that, there re few academic biographies more filled with the sinew of life than Robert Skidelsky's three-volume product on Keynes--true not least because Keynes himself was so full of the sinew of life (there is also an abridgment available). Skidelsky has a new single volume work out with the title Keynes: The Return of the Master, which sounds suspicioiusly like a quicky designed to capitalize on the current resurgence (haven't read it; sounds promising, but note the negative Amazon reviews).