Post-Keynesian Economics: New Foundations by Marc Lavoie Chapter 1: Essentials of Heterodox and Post-Keynesian Economics

Marc Lavoie's very long (74-page), very stimulating and sometimes very provocative first chapter has the title 'Essentials of heterodox and post-Keynesian economics'. It deals with an extremely broad range of issues in economic methodology and in the sociology (broadly defined) of different schools of thought in economics, in addition to providing a substantial discussion of theoretical and policy questions. Space constraints prevent me from dealing with many of these very interesting and occasionally contentious propositions. Instead I shall confine my contribution to an assessment of Marc's position on the heterodox and orthodox schools of thought (sections 1.2 and 1.3, pp. 4-16); on the related question of 'atomism versus holism' (section 1.3.3, pp. 17-24); on the different post-Keynesian strands, with particular reference to his treatment of Hyman Minsky, Piero Sraffa and Michal Kalecki (section 1.4.3, pp. 40-46); and on the important question of whether we should adopt a 'narrow tent' or 'broad tent' definition of post-Keynesianism (section 1.4.4, pp. 46-49).