ABSTRACT
Michal Kalecki (1899-1970) has long been recognized as one of the main progenitors of what has come to be known as the ‘Post Keynesian’ approach in economics (see Weintraub 1978; Eichner and Kregel 1975). Kalecki had a strong personal influence on Joan Robinson, Josef Steindl, and other major contributors to this approach, and is considered to have anticipated important aspects of John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory (1936).1 Kalecki’s contributions to the postKeynesian tradition include his theory of mark-up pricing by oligopolistic firms, his concept of financial constraints on business investment, his model of the distribution of income between wages and profits, and his analysis of the determination of the level of profits through a multiplier mechanism. Kalecki also influenced the theories of monopoly capitalism and the profit squeeze in the Marxian and radical tradition (Baran and Sweezy 1966; Glyn and Sutcliffe 1972; Boddy and Crotty 1975). In addition, Kalecki made major contributions to the ‘structuralist’ tradition in development economics (Taylor 1983, 1991; FitzGerald 1993) and some of Kalecki’s ideas have entered mainstream, neoclassical economics – although often without recognition of Kalecki’s priority.2
