Where to draw the line between laissez-faire and planning? Keynes and Friedman on public and semi-public institutions

This paper focuses on the institutions advocated by Keynes and Friedman to ensure efficiency. As they do not share the same optimism on the self-adjusting capacity of the economy, we first analyze their respective views on laissez-faire but also the place allowed to semi-public bodies and the ‘big company’. We then turn to the role attributed to the State. We obtain a mix of advocacies hardly reconcilable, definitive splits between them but also true points of agreement. This is to be explained by, first, their respective explanation of the Great Depression and, second, their respective views on money and uncertainty.