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THE GERMAN ANTI-KEYNES? ON WALTER EUCKEN’S MACROECONOMICS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2021

Lars P. Feld ,
Ekkehard A. Köhler  and
Daniel Nientiedt
Lars P. Feld*
Affiliation:
Lars P. Feld: University of Freiburg and Walter Eucken Institut
Ekkehard A. Köhler
Affiliation:
Ekkehard A. Köhler: University of Siegen
Daniel Nientiedt
Affiliation:
Daniel Nientiedt: New York University.
*
feld@eucken.de
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Abstract

The work of Walter Eucken (1891–1950), founder of German ordoliberalism, is often described as being in direct opposition to that of John Maynard Keynes. Our paper challenges this claim by making two main arguments. First, we show that Eucken supported a proto-Keynesian stimulus program at the height of the Great Depression, the so-called Lautenbach plan of 1931. Second, we analyze his critique of full employment policy, which reveals that Eucken’s approach to solving macroeconomic problems is fundamentally different from, if not necessarily contrary to, that of Keynes.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 548 - 563
Copyright
© The History of Economics Society, 2021

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 18th Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET), held in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 29–31 May 2014. The authors would like to thank the participants at the conference for their suggestions, in particular Jörg Bibow, Bertram Schefold, and Hans-Michael Trautwein. Valuable comments were also received from Heiko Burret, Uwe Dathe, Harald Hagemann, Hansjörg Klausinger, Oliver Landmann, Viktor Vanberg, and two anonymous referees.

References

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