John Maynard Keynes

Biography

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) was a British economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments worldwide. Born in Cambridge to an academic family, Keynes was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, where he later held a fellowship. He worked at the Treasury during World War I and attended the Paris Peace Conference as an economic adviser. His first major public work, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), argued presciently that the punitive Treaty of Versailles would lead to economic disaster and political instability in Europe. His magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), revolutionized economics by arguing that government intervention could stabilize economies during recessions. Keynesian economics dominated Western economic policy from the 1940s through the 1970s and remains influential. Beyond economics, Keynes was a patron of the arts, a member of the Bloomsbury Group, a brilliant essayist, and a successful investor. He is widely regarded as the most influential economist of the twentieth century.