New Keynesian Economics - Relation To Other Macroeconomic Schools

Relation To Other Macroeconomic Schools

Over the years, a sequence of 'new' macroeconomic theories related to or opposed to Keynesianism have been influential. After World War II, Paul Samuelson used the term neoclassical synthesis to refer to the integration of Keynesian economics with neoclassical economics. The idea was that the government and the central bank would maintain rough full employment, so that neoclassical notions—centered on the axiom of the universality of scarcity—would apply. John Hicks' IS/LM model was central to the neoclassical synthesis.

Later work by economists such as James Tobin and Franco Modigliani involving more emphasis on the microfoundations of consumption and investment was sometimes called neo-Keynesianism. It is often contrasted with the post-Keynesianism of Paul Davidson, which emphasizes the role of fundamental uncertainty in economic life, especially concerning issues of private fixed investment.

New Keynesianism, associated with John B. Taylor, Stanley Fischer, Gregory Mankiw, David Romer, Olivier Blanchard, Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, Jordi Galí, and Michael Woodford, is a response to Robert Lucas and the new classical school. That school criticized the inconsistencies of Keynesianism in the light of the concept of "rational expectations". The new classicals combined a unique market-clearing equilibrium (at full employment) with rational expectations. The New Keynesians use "microfoundations" to demonstrate that price stickiness hinders markets from clearing. Thus, the rational expectations-based equilibrium need not be unique.

Whereas the neoclassical synthesis hoped that fiscal and monetary policy would maintain full employment, the new classicals assumed that price and wage adjustment would automatically attain this situation in the short run. The new Keynesians, on the other hand, see full employment as being automatically achieved only in the long run, since prices are "sticky" in the short run. Government and central-bank policies are needed because the "long run" may be very long.

Emphasis has also been placed during the 2008 global financial and economic crisis on Keynes' stress on the importance of coordination of macroeconomic policies (e.g., monetary and fiscal stimulus) and of international economic institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and of the maintenance of an open trading system. This has been reflected in the work of IMF economists and of Donald Markwell.