The Godley-Tobin Lecture

Tobin and Godley

The Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE) created of the Godley-Tobin Lectures, an annual lecture to be delivered at the Eastern Economic Association meetings. James Galbraith provided the first lecture, to be published in the first issue of 2019.

Wynne Godley and James Tobin represent the best among Keynesian economists. Both scholars insisted they were non-hyphenated Keynesians, meaning Keynesianism transcends the political disputes that often accompany economics. There is a deeper scientific validity to Keynesianism, something we reaffirmed in our inaugural statement of purpose for ROKE [see Palley, Rochon, and Vernengo, 2012].

Wynne Godley was an Oxford-trained economist, influenced by Philip Andrews and the views of the Oxford Economic Research Group on full-cost pricing. He was also a Treasury economist and Head of the Department of Applied Economics, University of Cambridge. He is remembered for the sophistication of his stock-flow consistent macroeconomic models that gave him a prescient sense of the unsustainability of the dot.com and housing bubbles in the 1990s and 2000s. Godley died in May, 2010.

James Tobin was educated at Harvard University and spent most of his career at Yale University. He was also a member of the celebrated Council of Economic Advisers (1961-62), during the Kennedy administration. His accomplishments and contributions to the profession are too many to cite, but it is specifically worth mentioning that he won both the John Bates Clark Medal (1955) and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1981). Tobin died in March, 2002.

Tobin and Godley shared an interest in stock–flow consistent macroeconomic modelling, a belief in the appropriateness of macroeconomic modelling based on aggregate functions rather than microeconomic parable models, and a belief in the importance and feasibility of full employment.

The Godley-Tobin lectures are intended to celebrate the intellectual achievements of Wynne Godley and James Tobin. We also hope the lectures will contribute to advancing their macroeconomic approach and interests, and help rescue macroeconomics from the narrow theoretical frame within which it is currently trapped.

The editors of ROKE [Tom Palley and yours truly] are pleased to announce that Robert Rowthorn has accepted to give the second annual Godley-Tobin lecture at the 2019 meetings of the Eastern Economic Association, in New York City. Professor Rowthorn is Emeritus Professor of Economics at Cambridge University and a life Fellow of King’s College.

He was also a long-time colleague of Wynne Godley at Cambridge University.