John Maynard Keynes
English economist
John Maynard Keynes was an English economist whose writings are the basis of Keynesian economics. He wrote The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.
2 summaries 28 min of listening
British Born 1883 in Cambridge, United Kingdom Died 1946
Influenced by Adam Smith
About John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes (1883 to 1946) was born in Cambridge and studied mathematics at King's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1904. He went on to build on earlier work on the causes of business cycles. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, he argued that the level of total spending in an economy shapes how active it is, and that too little spending can lead to long periods of high unemployment. He set out these ideas in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, published in 1936. Keynes also worked as a civil servant, served as a director of the Bank of England, and belonged to the Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. He advised the British Treasury, took part in the Bretton Woods Conference, and was made Baron Keynes of Tilton in 1942. He married the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova in 1925.