Victoria Chick

Biography

Chick graduated with a Bachelor's and Master's from the University of California at Berkeley, writing a thesis on Canada's experience in the 1950s with flexible exchange rates. As a research student she was taught by Hyman Minsky (among others), although her interest in Keynes and his General Theory developed much later. After further study at the London School of Economics, in 1963 she secured a post at University College London where she remained for the rest of her career, being appointed to a Chair in 1993. At UCL her interests shifted from international economics to monetary theory and macroeconomics. Her first major book, The Theory of Monetary Policy (1973), was a critical evaluation of both the Keynesian and monetarist approaches to macroeconomics that were dominant of the time. In 1971 she was present at Joan Robinson's Ely Lecture to the American Economic Association, titled The Second Crisis in Economics, and at the meeting called by Joan Robinson and Paul Davidson which gave conscious expression to what became the Post Keynesian school of thought.

At this point Chick returned to The General Theory and wrote a critique of Clower and Leijonhufvud's reappraisal (Leijonhufvud, 1968) of the Economics of Keynes, leading eventually to her magnum opus Macroeconomics After Keynes (1983). In this book she portrayed the Keynesian Revolution as one of method, forced by taking seriously the effects of money, time and uncertainty. Her subsequent work has placed great emphasis on methodology and institutions.

In 1988 Chick founded together with Philip Arestis the Post Keynesian Economics Study Group (PKSG).

Major works