Abstract

Keynes’s name has resumed public recognition as a consequence of the recent economic crisis combined with apparent confusion on what economic policies are useful to overcome the growth-crisis.

There are many similarities to the 1930s, where Keynes wrote his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which changed the way macroeconomics was understood for quite a number of years. But the impact petered away after the crises of the 1970s and nearly disappeared in the wake of the methodology of new classical economics.

The prolonged crisis and the changed social and institutional frameworks call for renewed understanding of macroeconomics. Professor Jespersen’s claim is that the methodology of Keynes is still relevant and not yet fully understood. Keynes introduced the concept of ‘uncertainty’ into macroeconomic analysis. For that purpose he searched for a new methodology which could capture the importance of uncertainty (at the micro and macro level) for the making of a realistic analysis of macroeconomic development in the past, the present and for the future.

Lecture two is about policies. The main question is how to make the modern macroeconomic systems more robust in an increasingly uncertain environment, where ‘black swans’ seems to appear quite frequently.