"Francis Amasa Walker ( 1840-97) is widely recognised as an important figure in the history of American economics, having been the first president of the American Economic Association. His most well-known economic writings (he was also a notable statistician) are those concerned with wages and bimetallism. The wages question (1876) sparked off the controversy over the wages fund which led to the establishment of marginal productivity theories of distribution (see Gordon 1973), whilst Walker’s writings on bimetallism (e.g. 1896b), though no longer of great interest, concerned one of the most contentious political issues of his day. On his own admission Walker was not a great economic theorist, his strength lying rather in his keeping firmly in touch with practical life (see, for example, Dorfman, 109). His writings contain, however, a remarkable exposition of how an equilibrium with substantial unemployment might emerge. The passage which contains these ideas, included both in his Political economy (1885, 1896a) and in his Money, trade and industry (1879), has been neglected by most historians of the business cycle (e.g. Haberler 1943, Hansen 1964). An exception to this neglect is Hutchison 1953. Even Hutchison, however, fails to do justice to Walker’s arguments. The aim of my article, therefore, is to remedy this situation, and in doing so to say something about the nature of Keynes’ later work on the subject." (From introduction)
...MoreDescription Concerning Walker's “remarkable exposition of how an equilibrium with substantial unemployment might emerge”.
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