How economists got it wrong: A nuanced account

Abstract

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, many economists have blamed economics for having failed to warn us. Paul Krugman, for example, in a well-known New York Times Magazine article, suggests that Classical economists were blinded by the beauty of mathematics, and that Keynesian economics is the path of the future. This paper argues that the evolution of economic thinking is much more nuanced than Krugman portrays it, and that instead of embracing what has become known as Keynesian economics, macroeconomists should rather re-embrace the broader Classical economic tradition, of which Keynes was an important part. © 2011 Critical Review Foundation.