Geoff Tily has done me the honour of a blog post responding to my brief review here of Randall Wray’s new book, [amazon_link id=”0691159122″ target=”_blank” ]Why Minsky Matters. [/amazon_link]Geoff likes it that I criticise modern macroeconomics (he doesn’t perhaps realise that I’ve been in trouble before from macro friends like Simon Wren-Lewis for being so sceptical about the state of scientific knowledge about the aggregate economy; I want to criticise a wider range of modern macro than they do).

Geoff doesn’t like my statement that arguments over how to interpret Keynes are not interesting, which had as a by-the-way an observation that precision about meaning is an advantage of mathematical modelling. Reading my post back, it comes across as unnecessarily dismissive of Keynes. Of course he is an important figure, who did have things to say of relevance to the crisis if only people had remembered in time.

Having said that, his imprecision was exactly what opened the door for subsequent economists to interpret what he said and give it traction by formalising it. So I stick my argument that formal models are important even though one will always need words AS WELL to say the things that can’t be modelled.

[amazon_image id=”0691159122″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist[/amazon_image]

And actually – sorry Geoff – it isn’t debating what Keynes really meant that is of interest, but the contrasting economic arguments and the evidence that can be brought to bear. This might seem like nitpicking but there is a tendency to scholasticism if the debates are conducted in terms of what somebody (no matter how significant a figure) really meant or not. Reading Keynes is important, modernising macro is essential, and economists need both maths and words – an interior solution is definitely better here than a corner solution.

So, with that response, I encourage those who haven’t to read [amazon_link id=”1502423588″ target=”_blank” ]The General Theory [/amazon_link] – and what a shame there is no high quality, reasonably priced paperback edition at present.

[amazon_image id=”1502423588″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Classic John Maynard Keynes)[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”1846148138″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Essential Keynes (Penguin Classics)[/amazon_image]