Post-Keynesian Essays from Down Under Volume IV: Essays on Theory - Theory and Policy in an Historical Context

Joseph Halevi, G. C. Harcourt, Peter Kriesler and J. W. Nevile bring together a collection of their most influential papers on post-Keynesian thought. Their work stresses the importance of the underlying institutional framework, of the economy as a historical process and, therefore, of path determinacy. In addition, their essays suggest the ultimate goal of economics is as a tool to inform policy and make the world a better place, with better being defined by an overriding concern with social justice. Volume IV explores theory.

Joseph Halevi was born 1946 in Haifa, then British Palestine. An Alama Mater University of Rome La Sapienza, he began teaching economics at the New School of Social Research in New York and later at Rutgers University. He has a permanent appointment at the University of Sydney. He was Visiting Professor at the University of Connecticut and regularly in France at the Universities of Grenoble, Nice and Amiens. He has authored many books and contributed to the first edition of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics in 1987 and co-edited Beyond the Steady State with Macmillan in 1992, among others.

Geoff C. Harcourt was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1931. He was a graduate of the Universities of Melbourne and Cambridge. He has worked mainly at Adelaide (1958 to 1985) and Cambridge (1964 to 1966; 1972 to 1973; 1980; 1982-2010). He is now Visiting Professorial Fellow at UNSW Australia. He has authored or edited 29 books and over 360 articles, notes, chapters in books and reviews. His books include Some Cambridge Controversies in the Theory of Capital (1972), The Structure of Post-Keynesian Economics (2006), (with Prue Kerr) Joan Robinson (2009) and (jointly edited with Peter Kriesler) The Oxford Handbook of Post-Keynesian Economics (2013).

Peter Kriesler currently teaches in the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales. He also organizes the Annual Australian Society of Heterodox Economists Conference, which is now in its fourteenth year. Peter's main publications are in the areas of history of economic thought, heterodox economics, the Australian economy, labour economics, and economic perspectives on human rights.

J. W. Neville is Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He has published extensively on fiscal policy, macroeconomic policy in general, economics and ethics, and the history of economic thought. He has served on a number of statutory authorities and government enquiries.