ABSTRACT
In September 1939, Modigliani enrolled in the New School for Social Research, the so-called University in Exile. In this chapter we explore the origin of Modigliani’s 1944 influential article on Keynesian and classical economics, which contributed to the foundations of postwar neoclassical synthesis. Modigliani’s encounter with Jacob Marschak, Adolph Lowe and Hans Neisser, Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner, along with his earliest approach to economics (when in Italy), are the lenses through which Modigliani approached Keynes’s General Theory. We also argue that although Modigliani especially concentrated on the monetary aspects of Keynesian unemployment, as also appears from the dissertation, most of the attention of contemporary and the subsequent literature on the 1944 article focused on Modigliani’s reading of Keynes’s theory in terms of wage rigidity.
