ABSTRACT
Geoff Harcourt combines a vigorous commitment to the Keynesian tradition of policy-orientated macroeconomic analysis with a lifelong concern to sort out the puzzle of the relationship between the short-run performance of an economy and its long-run prospects. In this, he is part of a tradition of post-Keynesian analysis which began with Joan Robinson, Richard Kahn and Nicholas Kaldor. Just as they were, Geoff is very willing to confront the orthodoxies of the time. This chapter, which begins with an account of a current orthodoxy-the ‘natural’ or ‘non-accelerating inflation’ rate of unemployment-and explores possible links between short-run outcomes and long-run constraints on economic performance, is motivated by these concerns of his.
