ABSTRACT
The previous chapter deliberately avoided discussing Keynes’s most significant work in economic theory from the first half of the 1920s–A Tract on Monetary Reformof 1923. This was his first book- length analysis of purely economics topics since Indian Currency and Financeof 1913, and since the latter was ‘merely’ a study of the financial institutions of one single country, A Tract on Monetary Reformrepresented Keynes’s first major work in economics more widely conceived. From a purely historical perspective it had only moderate impact on the economics of its day, and had its author not subsequently published much more significant theoretical works, it would probably be regarded as not especially original or influential. However, this does not mean either that it was uninteresting in itself, or that it was not important from the point of view of the intellectual development of its author. According to R.F. Harrod, it had ‘an important place in economic history’, due to its analysis of the post-war monetary histories of various European countries. 1
