Pasinetti and the classical Keynesians : nine methodological issues

"In 2005 Luigi Pasinetti was asked by his friend and colleague Pier Paolo Varri1 how he would like his 75th birthday to be celebrated. Pasinetti immediately replied: "let us discuss my new book!". The book was of course Keynes and the Cambridge Keynesians, which was almost finished at that time. One of the most original and provocative parts was the 'Postlude: fighting for independence' of Book Two (The Cambridge School of Keynesian Economics), where he portrays what he considers the main features of the classical-Keynesian school, offering a list of nine theoretical and methodological characteristics, qualifying and unifying (to some extent, at least) the economists associated with it (Pasinetti, 2007, pp. 217-237). When about one year ago, John E. Woods (a student of Luigi Pasinetti at King's College in the late-1960s) and Philip Good (Economics Editor of Cambridge University Press) proposed to us the idea of a collection of essays discussing Pasinetti's 'nine characteristics', we felt it certainly an appropriate, if a rather unconventional, way to celebrate Pasinetti's 90th birthday."