ABSTRACT
The two greatest economists, Joseph A. Schumpeter and John Maynard Keynes, were born, only a few months apart, a hundred years ago: Schumpeter on February 8, 1883, in a provincial Austrian town; Keynes on June 5, 1883, in Cambridge, England. The two men were not antagonists. Both challenged long-standing assumptions. Schumpeter and Keynes are often contrasted politically, with Schumpeter being portrayed as the 'conservative' and Keynes the 'radical'. The differences between Schumpeter and Keynes go much deeper than economic theorems or political views. Schumpeter was himself a student of the great men of Austrian economics and at a time when Vienna was the world capital of economic theory. Schumpeter's work as an economist after World War I is of great importance to economic theory. Schumpeter, however, increasingly concerned himself with the question of how the public sector could be controlled and limited so as maintain political freedom and an economy capable of performance, growth, and change.
