ABSTRACT
By the mid-1980s New Classical economics was itself on the verge of being wiped out by a new strain of Keynesianism, New Keynesian economics, which was immune to the New Classical virus. In addition to publishing, most economists interested in theory must teach. Given current US teaching institutions, teachability means that the theory must be reducible to a simple model that captures its essence and can be conveyed to students at beginning and intermediate levels. Keynesian and neo-Keynesian economics also nicely met the teachability criterion. The decline of Keynesian economics was exacerbated by a compromise between neo-Keynesians and neo-Classicals. The evolution away from Keynesian economics began before there were significant empirical problems with the Keynesian model, suggesting that that evolution was primarily fueled by internal rather than external criteria. Empirical evidence that Keynesian economics lives can be seen in survey results by Bruno Frey et al. and David Colander and Arjo Klamer.
