Econ 201 Keynesian Economics

Lecture Slides

• • Simple example of changing equilibrium

    • Spreadsheet that will hopefully help (You would need to download it or save it as your own Google spreadsheet so you can try putting different values.)

  • Answer key

For interest

• • An estimate of the MPC from tax cuts (NBER #16684, Kellogg's Jonathan Parker and coauthors)

• Alan Turing:  A great article from The New Yorker. World War II would have been much, much worse without him. And what was his payback for saving free society?

  • This essay on Turing is outstanding.  (Slate, July 25, 2013)

• Time Magazine rated Keynes one of the Top 100 Thinkers of the Twentieth Century, but then they've been fans since 1923.

• The size of the multiplier on tax changes:  "[T]ax changes have very large effects on output. Our baseline specification suggests that an exogenous tax increase of one percent of GDP lowers real GDP by roughly three percent."

  • The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)  PDF, PDF w/o footnotes, Text 

• Letter from Keynes to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, February 1, 1938 

The Great Depression

• Cool, short montage about the Great Depression (from HBO's Carnivale).  It really captures how severely and universally things were going to hell

• It got really scary in 1932 when veterns from World War I marched on DC to demand the bonus they'd been promised.

  • General MacArthur (and Eisenhower) turned the troops loose on them and their squatter huts, and the film of it played in newsreels all across America.  

• At the same time, the environment was turning much of the midwest into the surface of the moon

• The Dust Bowl...we could see that we weren't taking very good care of the environment...but how bad could things really get?  Oh....

• FDR got elected, and gave his inaugural address on March 4, 1933

• "So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear. . .is fear itself. . . nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

• Diary entries from the Great Depression (Washington Post, Nov. 1, 2009)

For amusement

• • Keynes the Art Collector - BBC Magazine, May 2, 2014

  • A Desert Island Recession (Tom the Dancing Bug)

• "Fear the Boom and Bust" - Keynes vs Hayek Rap Anthem  (Not as bad as you might think.)

  • Cliff-Notes for the economics behind this.

  • Keynes versus Hayek, Round 2.0!  (Yet more econ rapping.)

  • And here is actual Keynes

  • Keynes cartoon

• Keynes was an incredible quote machine!

• The American Consumption Function

• Keynes's sex diaries.  Eeewwwweee.  Who does that?  Keep a diary?  

• Mr. Boffo

  • Some interesting links to stuff about Keynes