The Post Keynesian Theory of Price

Abstract

Post Keynesianism is a relatively modern school of economic thought, originating in the mid-1970s, and ‘associated with the vision and ideas of the unorthodox Cambridge economists who rose to prominence in the wake of the Keynesian revolution’ (Dunn, 2000, p. 345). Sheila Dow, a leading Post Keynesian, suggests that Joan Robinson, who worked with Keynes at Cambridge, was probably the first to coin the term ‘Post Keynesian’, and credits Alfred Eichner with providing the first general account of Post Keynesian economics (2001, p. 13).¹ Post Keynesianism is usually regarded as a sub-grouping of a broader grouping, the Heterodox school. The Heterodox school is an amalgam of disparate approaches to economics whose sole unifying thread appears to be their opposition to what is deemed to be orthodox economics, which, for the most part, is what has been referred to in this book as Neoclassical economics. It, the Heterodox school, includes inter alia Institutionalists, Marxists, neo-Ricardians, neo-Austrians and Post Keynesians. Although, from its inception, Post Keynesianism purported to be more than a collection of those opposed to mainstream economics, it is accepted that it falls well short of representing a settled, coherent, alternative to the mainstream.