Uploaded October 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Obedience is rewarded.
Efficiency guarantees citizenship.
But what happens when a system forgets its purpose?
This is a transmission for the curious, the skeptical, the hopeful.
LearnEcon.org
Created by Nick Alpha
Produced by Matthew Kulvicki
Obedience is rewarded.
Efficiency guarantees citizenship.
But what happens when a system forgets its purpose?
This is a transmission for the curious, the skeptical, the hopeful.
LearnEcon.org
Created by Nick Alpha
Produced by Matthew Kulvicki
![The Web [Axel Leijonhufvud]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/l6JLXQc-Mus/mqdefault.jpg "The Web [Axel Leijonhufvud]
What is your first association when somebody talks to you about the economy?
Axel Leijonhufvud was one of the most creative and perspicacious macroeconomists of the last century. He became famous early in his life for his contention that the Keynesian Economics being taught and understood at that time was a serious misinterpretation of Keyness ideas. Instead of the emphasis on inflexible wages and prices as being central, Keynes, he argued, was focused on the failure of intertemporal coordination. Taking that challenge into consideration required a different way of looking at the economy and theorizing disequilibrium. As a committed supporter of the history of economic thought, he was singularly aware of the problems of taking a wrong path intellectually a mistake that could lead to years of misguided work. And indeed, that wrong turn, away from the fertile ground of disequilibrium macroeconomics did occur, as the profession moved away from it to what he may have seen as an academic and theoretical dead end. His latter career was devoted to finding more meaningful and generative foundations for dealing with the deeper issues of macroeconomic and monetary stability. In the last decade of his life he was a founding member of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a key part of its academic council.
In this animation, taken from his speech at the INET plenary in Berlin in 2012, he describes the process by which macroeconomic instability is generated. We invite you to see it and to explore the many other contributions of this true intellectual giant.
Read his papers and more in our archive of his work:
http://newth.ink/axel
Professor Leijonhufvud speaking at INET Berlin 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90zLGjQr6jo
Axels Masters Series interview playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmtuEaMvhDZbnT7kpLB1ilBhhbWlenPOC
Produced by Matthew Kulvicki & Nick Alpha")
