Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T15:51:10.241Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Keynes's Changing Conception of Probability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Bradley W. Bateman
Bradley W. Bateman
Affiliation:
Simmons College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One of the most actively discussed aspects of Keynes's thought during the last decade has been his concern with uncertainty and probability theory. As the concerns of current macroeconomic theorists have turned increasingly to the effects of expectations and uncertainty, interest has grown in the fact that Keynes was the author of A Treatise on Probability (1921) and that uncertainty plays a prominent role in Chapter 12 of The General Theory as well as in three 1937 papers in which he summarized The General Theory's main point. Not surprisingly, though, there has been very little agreement in this recent discussion about exactly what the significance of Keynes's early work in probability was to his later work as an economist, or about what the roles of uncertainty and expectations are in The General Theory.

Type
Essays
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , April 1987 , pp. 97 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Byrne, Edmund F. 1968. Probability and Opinion. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coddington, Alan. 1982. “Deficient Foresight: A Troublesome Theme in Keynesian Economics.” American Economic Review 72:480–87.Google Scholar
Collini, Stefan, Winch, Donald, and Burrow, John. 1983. That Noble Science of Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1975. The Emergence of Probability, New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Harberler, Gottfreid. 1973. Prosperity and Depression. Geneva: League of Nations.Google Scholar
Harrod, Roy F. 1951. The Life of John Maynard Keynes. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hicks, John R. 1979. Causality in Economics. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Kevles, Daniel J. 1985. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Use of Human Heredity. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Keynes, John Maynard. 1921. A Treatise on Probability. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Keynes, John Maynard. 1936. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. New York: Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Keynes, John Maynard. 1972. Essays in Biography. Vol. X, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, edited by Moggridge, Donald. New York: St. Martin's Press; for the Royal Economic Society.Google Scholar
Keynes, John Maynard. 1973. The General Theory and After. Part II: Defence and Development. Vol. XIV, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, edited by Moggridge, Donald. New York: St. Martin's Press; for the Royal Economic Society.Google Scholar
Kyburg, Henry E. Jr., 1978. “Review of The Emergence of Probability, by Ian Hacking.” Theory and Decision 9:205–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loasby, Brian J. 1976. Choice, Complexity and Ignorance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Meltzer, Allan H. 1981. “Keynes's General Theory: A Different Perspective.” Journal of Economic Literature 19:34–64.Google Scholar
Mises, Richard von. 1928. Wahrscheinlichkeit, Statistik, and Wahrheit. Vienna: J. Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, G.E. 1903. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ramsey, Frank. 1978. Foundations: Essays in Philosophy, Logic, Mathematics, and Economics, edited by Mellor, D. H.. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand. 1922. “Review of A Treatise on Probability, by John Maynard Keynes.” Mathematical Gazette 11:119–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shackle, G.L.S. 1961. “Keynes and the Nature of Human Affairs.” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 87:93–110.Google Scholar
Shackle, G.L.S. 1974. Keynesian Kaleidics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Shackle, G.L.S. 1984. “Comment on Bausor and Rutherford.” Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics 6:388–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skidelsky, Robert. 1983. John Maynard Keynes Volume I: Hopes Betrayed (1883–1890). London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Stohs, Mark. 1980. “‘Uncertainty’ in Keynes's General Theory.” History of Political Economy 12:372–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tinbergen, Jan. 1939. A Method and Its Application to Investment Activity. Geneva: League of Nations.Google Scholar
Viner, Jacob. 1972. The Role of Providence in the Social Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar