John Kenneth Galbraith

Professor John Kenneth Galbraith, OC , Ph.D , LL.D (born October 15, 1908) is the most widely read economist of the twentieth century. The Canadian-born author of four dozen books and over one thousand articles was on the faculty of Harvard University from 1934 to 1975 (where he remains a professor emeritus). He served in the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson. In 1961, Kennedy appointed him ambassador to India, where he served until 1963. Although he is a former president of the American Economic Association, Galbraith is considered something of an iconoclast by many mainstream economists because he eschews mathematical modeling in favor of non-technical political economics. He is also an "old-fashioned" Keynesian with progressive values and a gift for writing. His work includes scores of popular books on economic topics in which he describes ways in which economic theory does not always mesh with real life. Publication in 2004 of a highly praised biography, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics has renewed widespread interest in his career and his ideas.

Works

In American Capitalism: The concept of countervailing power, a seminal work published in 1952, Galbraith outlines how the American economy in the future would be managed by a triumvirate of big business, big labour, and an activist government. He contrasted this with the previous pre-depression era where big business had free rein over the economy.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In another work, The Affluent Society, which became a bestseller, Galbraith outlines his view that to be successful the United States would need to make large public investments in items such as highways and education. In this work, he says, he coined the phrase "conventional wisdom." In The New Industrial State (1967), he argues that very few industries in the United States fit the model of perfect competition. A third related work was Economics and the Public Purpose (1973), in which he expanded on these themes by discussing, among other issues, the subservient role of women in the unrewarded management of ever-greater consumption, and the role of the technostructure in the large firm in influencing perceptions of sound economic policy aims. In A Short History of Financial Euphoria (1990), he traces financial bubbles through several centuries, and cautions that what currently seems to be "the next great thing" may not be that great and may have quite irrational factors promoting it.

Related Topics:
1967 - Perfect competition - 1973 - Technostructure - 1990

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~