Effective Demand: Securing the Foundations

<title>Abstract</title>This paper is one of three contributions to a symposium commenting on papers previously published by the other authors. My analysis of Chapter 3 of the General Theory is that it built a bridge between the entrepreneurs' behaviour at the microeconomic level and the closure of the system at the macroeconomic level. I agree with Hartwig (2007) in many respects. The main divergence between us concerns entrepreneurs' expectations, which can be related to the overall economic situation (Hartwig's interpretation) or to their own situation (my interpretation). Hayes (2007a), while he focused on overlapping production periods, proposes a detailed analysis of the entrepreneurs' behaviour. As a result, it seems to me that he doesn't focus enough on the system closure aspects of the principle of effective demand.