What Goes Around, Comes Around: fluctuations in the popularity of Keynesian economics

Jim Thomas looks at how the intellectual battles between Lionel Robbins, Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes influenced economic thinking in the 1930s and also echo today.

The talk will outline how arguments for free markets vs government spending vie for the approval of policy makers and the public and explore how the debates at LSE and Cambridge shaped these.

Jim Thomas is Emeritus Reader in Economics and Research Associate in STICERD at LSE. His current research is in the history of economics. Recent publications include chapters on Coase and the London School of Economics in the 1920s-1940s, Cambridge and Econometrics and (forthcoming) Allen, Roy George Douglas (1906 – 1983) and LSE and Econometrics.

Mary S Morgan is the Albert O. Hirschman Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics at the London School of Economics. Her current work is on case studies and narratives and on ‘performativity’: the ways in which economic ideas, technologies and measurements reshape economies in the world.

LSE Library (@LSELibrary) hosts a regular program of exhbitions showcasing some of the Library's treasured collections. The current exhibition is about economic history and is called A Wealth of Ideas: Economics and the LSE

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSERobbins

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LSE holds a wide range of events, covering many of the most controversial issues of the day, and speakers at our events may express views that cause offence. The views expressed by speakers at LSE events do not reflect the position or views of the London School of Economics and Political Science.