Have new classicists invented market clearing or have they rehabilited it ? This is the question addressed in the present paper. It is generally agreed that market clearing underpins Walrasian theory, so my exploration is limited to the question of whether this is also true for Marshallian...

The aim of this paper is to give an account of the unfolding of macroeconomic from Keynes to the present day. To this end I shall use a grid of analyses resulting from the combination of two distinctions. The first is the Marshall-Walras divide, the second is the distinction between Keynesianism...

Is the Great Depression amenable to real business cycle theory ? In the 1970s and 1980s Lucas and Prescott took an abstentionist stance. They admitted that, because of its exceptional character, an explanation of the Great Depression was beyond the grasp of the equilibrium approach to the...

This paper addresses the issue of why Keynesian economists have had such a hard time in giving the concept of involuntary unemployment a place in economic theory. Is the gradual demise of this concept a manifestation of some inner defect in economic theory or is it due to some intrinsic weakness...

The aim of this paper is to examine economists’ views about the relationship between Marshallian and Walrasian theory. Are the complementary, as is usually believed, or do they constitute alternative research programmes ? My paper compares two viewpoints on this matter, the conciliatory and...

Analysing the recent history of macroeconomics, my paper claims that the new classical revolution should be viewed as a substitution of Walrasian macroeconomics to the earlier prevailing Marshalian macroeconomics. The first part of the paper is concerned with two conceptual prerequisites, the...

The aim of this article is to assess Friedman’s claim, put forward in his 1949 article on the Marshallian demand curve, that there is a methodological divide between the Marshallian and Walrasian approaches. Friedman’s argument will be critically examined and compared with the views he...

The aim of this paper is to examine critically Lucas’ arguments against Keynes’s General Theory and in particular against Keynes’s concept of involuntary unemployment. It comprises two main parts. In the first, I question Lucas’s claim that Keynes betrayed the equilibrium discipline by...

Hicks is renown for having introduced the temporary equilibrium framework in his book Value and Capital. Subsequently, however, he partially recanted this framework by rejecting the market clearing idea while still keeping the week device. The aim of this paper is to assess whether this change...

Present-day macroeconomics has sometimes been dubbed “the new neoclassical synthesis”, suggesting that it constitutes a reincarnation of the neoclassical synthesis of the 1950s. This paper assesses this understanding. To this end, we examine the contents of the “old” and the “new”...