ABSTRACT

This paper celebrates the contributions to Keynesian theory of the late Brazilian economist Fernando Cardim de Carvalho (1953–2018). We use Carvalho’s 12 refereed English-language papers on Keynesian theory — the first published in 1983, the last in 2016 — as a point of departure for reflecting on two questions confronting macroeconomists today. First, what is the work of the economist — in what does economic analysis consist? Second, in this post-crisis era, how might macroeconomics — and specifically Keynesian macroeconomics — be rebuilt? Carvalho’s writings show that the work of the economist can be as much about understanding the raw elements of human behavior in the real world — what we will call the foundational level of analysis — as about constructing models depicting the momentum of economic systems incorporating these behaviors. Adopting this approach to the practice of theory leads to insights and frameworks that would be lost if macroeconomic theorizing were equated with formal model building: it will enrich exchanges among economists, deepen the conceptual roots of Post Keynesian macroeconomics, and facilitate interdisciplinary exchange.

摘要

本文庆祝已故巴西经济学家 Fernando Cardim de Carvalho (1953–2018) 对凯恩斯主义理论的贡献。我们使用卡瓦略关于凯恩斯理论的 12 篇经过审阅的英文论文——第一篇发表于 1983 年，最后一篇发表于 2016 年——作为反思当今宏观经济学家面临的两个问题的出发点。首先，经济学家的工作是什么——经济分析包括什么？其次，在这个后危机时代，宏观经济学——特别是凯恩斯主义宏观经济学——将如何重建？卡瓦略的著作表明，经济学家的工作既可以是了解现实世界中人类行为的原始要素——我们称之为分析的基础层面——也可以是构建描述包含这些行为的经济系统动量的模型。