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Neoclassical Synthesis

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Abstract

The term ‘neoclassical synthesis’ appears to have been coined by Paul Samuelson to denote the consensus view of macroeconomics which emerged in the mid-1950s in the US. To quote from the third edition of Economics (1955, p. 212):

In recent years 90 per cent of American Economists have stopped being ‘Keynesian economists’ or ‘anti-Keynesian economists’. Instead they have worked toward a synthesis of whatever is valuable in older economics and in modern theories of income determination. The result might be called neoclassical economics and is accepted in its broad outlines by all but about 5 per cent of extreme left wing and right wing writers.

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Authors

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John Eatwell Murray Milgate Peter Newman

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© 1991 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Blanchard, O.J. (1991). Neoclassical Synthesis. In: Eatwell, J., Milgate, M., Newman, P. (eds) The World of Economics. The New Palgrave. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21315-3_66

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