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This paper reviews the treatment of open economy issues in Paul Davidson's book, John Maynard Keynes. Davidson aptly summarizes Keynes's criticism of the international monetary system for the asymmetric "burden of adjustment" it places on deficit countries compared with surplus countries, which imparts a contractionary bias to the world economy. Davidson also updates Keynes's proposals for global monetary reform and extends his analysis of international trade. However, Davidson's arguments about mainstream views of international finance and the ineffectiveness of exchange rate adjustments are on less solid ground. This paper suggests reformulations of Davidson's interpretations on the latter two points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores themes suggested by Paul Davidson's 2007 book John Maynard Keynes. I argue, first, that rejection of the neutrality of money goes beyond nominal rigidity to explain the possibility of insufficient effective demand. Second, I relate Davidson's rejection of the "gross substitution axiom" to the Keynesian critique of the coordination of saving and investment through the loanable funds market, and to the possible failure of wage and price adjustment to assure full employment aggregate demand. Third, I propose that the inherent uncertainty implied by Davidson's assumption of a nonergodic system affects the way economists understand human behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to demonstrate that Keynes's practical writings on the crisis in the Lancashire cotton spinning industry in the 1920s were consistent with the 1930s theoretical conceptualisation of user costs in the General Theory. It is suggested that the key (common) link between these analyses is Keynes's concern with how uncertainty is distributed, in specific historical circumstances, between institutions at the levels of the firm, industry, the industry-financial institution interface, and the local and global economies. It is this concern which still has important, if not more, research and policy relevance today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]