“A criticism of Keynes and Hayek would have to begin by pointing out the fact that in their theoretical systems there is no place for the uncertainty factor and anticipations.”

—  Gunnar Myrdal

Source: Monetary Equilibrium (1939), p. 32; Cited in: Philip Pilkington, " Gunnar Myrdal’s Prescient Criticisms of Keynes’ General Theory http://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/gunnar-myrdals-prescient-criticisms-of-keynes-general-theory/" Posted on August 10, 2013

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A criticism of Keynes and Hayek would have to begin by pointing out the fact that in their theoretical systems there is…" by Gunnar Myrdal?
Gunnar Myrdal photo
Gunnar Myrdal 26
Swedish economist 1898–1987

Related quotes

John Hicks photo

“I did not begin from Keynes: I began from Pareto, and Hayek.”

John Hicks (1904–1989) British economist

Source: Classics and Moderns, (1983), p. 359 : footnote 10: There is evidence for this, in the paper 'Equilibrium and the Cycle'

“In the years after 1936, whilst Hayek was working on The Pure Theory of Capital, most economists were convinced by Keynes, whose theory had an elegance and simplicity that Hayek’s did not. Keynes’ theory lacked Hayek’s theoretical rigor in that it was not based on equilibrium (on individual rationality), and there were places in the argument where Keynes relied on loose, informal arguments, preferring to put his trust in intuition rather than formal theory. Keynesians did not solve the problems with capital theory that Hayek had identified: they just bypassed or ignored them. According to Hayek’s methodological criteria, Keynes’ theory was decidedly inferior. Against this, Keynes’ theory provided opportunities for mathematical and statistical analysis that Hayek’s did not. Indeed, though Hayek paid some attention to data, he did so only minimally: he certainly made no attempt to test his theory against statistical data. The choice of Keynesian theory was, at least in part, a methodological one.”

Roger Backhouse (economist) (1951) British economist

"Hayek on money and the business cycle", 2006

“When Keynes’s General Theory was published in February 1936, it obliterated all else on the scene in academic economics. Hayek was known to be working on a treatise on capital as Keynes’s work was published (the work that became The Pure Theory of Capital). While there was some anticipation in academia for this forthcoming major work, interest even by economists in Hayek’s work waned.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

“Keynes ultimately placed his hopes for good government in exceptional men. The focus in Hayek’s work was rules.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

“Following the financial crisis of September 2008 when the American investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, threatening to engulf the entire banking system, the British economist John Maynard Keynes returned to center stage. In the popular press and in the writings of many economists, Keynes featured prominently as governments around the world urgently sought ways to avoid economic collapse. (…) After only a brief delay, critics of Keynes’s ideas also began to appear; but the emergence of such critics only served to emphasize the fact of his return, for only a few years earlier Keynes’s name would not even have appeared in public debate about economic policy: his ideas were seen as having so little relevance that it did not even seem necessary to mention his name when discussing the performance of the economy.”

Roger Backhouse (economist) (1951) British economist

Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman, ch.1 "Keynes Returns, but Which Keynes?" Capitalist revolutionary : John Maynard Keynes (2011).

“From Keynes' point of view the economic system, before the war failed in its solution of the unemployment problem”

Lawrence Klein (1920–2013) American economist

The Keynesian Revolution. Vol. 19. New York: Macmillan, 1947/66. p. 166

Edmund Phelps photo

“What theory can we use to get us out of the impending slump quickly and reliably? To use the 'new classical' theory of fluctuations begun at Chicago in the 1970s – the theory in which the "risk management" models are embedded – is unthinkable, since it is precisely the theory falsified by the asset price collapse. The thoughts of some have turned to John Maynard Keynes. His insights into uncertainty and speculation were deep. Yet his employment theory was problematic and the 'Keynesian' policy solutions are questionable at best…. At the end of his life Keynes wrote of 'modernist stuff, gone wrong and turned sour and silly'. He told his friend Friedrich Hayek he intended to re-examine his theory in his next book. He would have moved on. The admiration we all have for Keynes's fabulous contributions should not sway us from moving on.”

Edmund Phelps (1933) American economist

Edmund Phelps "Keynes had no sure cure for slumps."in: The Financial Times. Columbia University, November 4, 2008.

“I think a highly rational person would have high moral uncertainty at this point and not necessarily be described as "altruistic."”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/p4Gd8pRcbnKo46hus/building-toward-a-friendly-ai-team#s5uoQrSoFeKke29dm on LessWrong, June 2012

Clement Attlee photo

“I shall not waste time on this theoretical stuff, which seems to me to be a secondhand version of the academic views of an Austrian professor—Friedrich August von Hayek—who is very popular just now with the Conservative Party. Any system can be reduced to absurdity by this kind of theoretical reasoning, just as German professors showed theoretically that British democracy must be beaten by German dictatorship. It was not.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (5 June 1945), quoted in The Times (6 June 1945), p. 2. The Conservatives had used some of their paper ration for the election on Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom.
Leader of the Opposition

“Hayek’s essential gist in capital theory was that capital is heterogeneous, that it cannot be put to many uses simultaneously or at different times. If these empirical assumptions as to capital’s heterogeneity are false, then his theoretical system of economic activity falls. Hayek never established that changes in interest rates primarily and predominantly influence capital production of goods of higher order and their prices.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Related topics