Introduction

There is widespread agreement that the greatest contribution of John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) to modern economics was the construction, for the first time, of a model explaining how the level of employment is determined. At the same time, although the term ‘Keynesian Economics’ is frequently used with considerable nonchalance by Keynesian and anti-Keynesian economists alike as if there could be no doubt about the exact meaning of the expression, certain facets of the evolution of Keynes’s ideas have been somewhat overlooked. Although documentation of the great changes and evolutionary developments in Keynes’s thought has been readily available in the Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes (JMK ) and in Keynes’s Economic Papers (on microfilm), with the notable exception of the pioneering work of Patinkin there have been remarkably few studies attempting to trace the complicated route from A Tract on Monetary Reform (December 1923. Hereafter the Tract) to The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (February 1936. Hereafter the General Theory). This book is the result of my research to address this neglected, yet crucial, aspect of the genesis of Keynes’s Economics.