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This paper celebrates the contributions to Keynesian theory of the late Brazilian economist Fernando Cardim de Carvalho (1953–2018). We use Carvalho's 12 refereed English-language papers on Keynesian theory — the first published in 1983, the last in 2016 — as a point of departure for reflecting on two questions confronting macroeconomists today. First, what is the work of the economist — in what does economic analysis consist? Second, in this post-crisis era, how might macroeconomics — and specifically Keynesian macroeconomics — be rebuilt? Carvalho's writings show that the work of the economist can be as much about understanding the raw elements of human behavior in the real world — what we will call the foundational level of analysis — as about constructing models depicting the momentum of economic systems incorporating these behaviors. Adopting this approach to the practice of theory leads to insights and frameworks that would be lost if macroeconomic theorizing were equated with formal model building: it will enrich exchanges among economists, deepen the conceptual roots of Post Keynesian macroeconomics, and facilitate interdisciplinary exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-Keynesian economics and ecological economics have in common that they are considered to be ‘heterodox’ schools of thought. Aside from that, there has not been a strong connection between them. Previous books on post-Keynesian economics contain no chapter on environmental or ecological issues. This neglect has led leading ecological economists to criticize post-Keynesians for succumbing to the same growth paradigm as the neoclassical school. This paper argues that the two approaches are complementary in the sense that they each have different strong points. Ecological economics has correctly pointed out that the growth of the global economy may not be welfare-improving anymore, whereas post-Keynesians have gained valuable insights into the functioning of the capitalist growth process. To determine the feasibility of a synthesis between the two schools, the paper compares their approaches to the problems of production, consumption, and economic dynamics as well as the associated policy recommendations. It shows that on a theoretical level the two schools have much in common, but their policy conclusions differ with regard to the desirability of further growth. The paper concludes that a synthesis of both approaches may lead to a better understanding of how a capitalist economy operates in a natural environment with limits to growth and to better-informed policy advice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A robust and critical post-Keynesianism can be specified on the basis of time, uncertainty, and the investigation of the institutions that structure material life, without presupposing what those institutions are. This paper criticises the inclusion in influential presentations of the axiomatic foundation of post-Keynesianism of propositions about government and money that presuppose a particular ensemble of institutions. That ensemble corresponds to the ideal-type called modernity. Without modernity post-Keynesianism gains logical parsimony and breadth of application; the paper discusses non-modernist writers in the tradition that includes J. M. Keynes, K. N. Raj, Celso Furtado and Juan Noyola. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]