Influencing Keynes: the intellectual origins of the General Theory

Abstract

Richard Kahn aside, from which other economist did Keynes derive even a single idea found in the General Theory? As a reading of almost the entire literature on the transition from the Treatise on Money will show, there is no economist to whom Keynes gave the slightest credit as an influence on the arguments found in the text nor are such influences an important part of the subsequent literature. Yet for all that, Keynes owed major debts to a number of economists from whose works he took significant components without acknowledgment. His taking the words «supply creates its own demand» from the entirely unknown Harlan McCracken set a pattern that can be recognised in his unacknowledged acquisitions from others amongst his contemporaries. The present paper will focus on the works of a number of economists, mostly American, from whom it will be shown that Keynes took a number of concepts that were to feature in the arguments presented in the General Theory.