8.2 /10 1 Votes8.2
Country United States Publisher Van Nostrand Pages 458 pp. OCLC 264550952 | 4.1/5 Goodreads Language English Publication date 1959 Originally published 1959 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar Works by Henry Hazlitt, John Maynard Keynes books, Other books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Failure of the "New Economics" (1959) is a book by Henry Hazlitt offering a detailed critique of John Maynard Keynes' work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936).
Contents
Overview
Hazlitt's work represents the most detailed critical analysis of The General Theory ever undertaken from an Austrian perspective. Hazlitt embarked on this project because, in his view, although general critiques of Keynes and The General Theory had been made, no critic had completed a detailed, paragraph-by-paragraph, analysis of the work and accordingly followers of Keynes could argue that previous critiques were shallow and did not indicate an understanding of Keynes' revolutionary ideas.
Reception
Editor John Chamberlain reviewed The Failure of the "New Economics" in The Freeman, and in light of its controversial, heterodox nature titled his article, They’ll Never Hear the End of It, writing:
Economist Ludwig von Mises called it "a devastating criticism of the Keynesian doctrines."
Reviewer Joseph McKenna comments that Hazlitt is "grossly unfair" in comparing Keynes' statements of facts to historical events more recent than the General Theory, and that Hazlitt rejects mathematical formulations and aggregation as imperfect, while the question is, "whether the approximation is sufficiently accurate to add anything to our understanding."