An economist’s economist

Copyright 2010 The Economist; Letters, June 10, 2010

Sir,

Your obituary of Wynne Godley (May 29th) did an injustice to his considerable intellectual achievements in macroeconomics and his courage in going against the orthodoxy that has ruled the economics profession for the past three decades. That very orthodoxy is now under attack all across the world, its otiose theoretical constructions having been exposed to the harsh light of actual economic events. Godley’s contributions to macroeconomics include his 1978 work on pricing with Kenneth Coutts and William Nordhaus, the textbook written in 1983 with Francis Cripps that inspired the “New Cambridge” group, and his 2006 book on monetary economics, written with Marc Lavoie.

His often-cited success as a macroeconomic forecaster came about precisely because he developed a systematic framework for analysing the impact of potential developments, applied first to the British economy at Cambridge and subsequently to America’s economy at the Levy Economics Institute.

Instead of taking the trouble to address these contributions, your piece settled for personal gossip, ending with a snide comment that “against a background like this, a little waywardness in the world of macroeconomics seems entirely forgivable.”

Anwar Shaikh
Professor of Economics
New School for Social Research
New York

Gennaro Zezza
Associate Professor of Economics
University of Cassino
Cassino, Italy

Dimitri Papadimitriou
President
Levy Economics Institute
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York