The Expansion of the Economic Toolbox

Abstract

Standard histories of economics identify the 1970s as the decade of crisis for the distinctively Keynesian aspect of the Samuelsonian synthesis described in the previous chapter. This is often coupled with an emphasis on a shift in applied economics — that is to say, in policy analysis — from confidence in the economic management capacity of the state to a ‘neoliberal’ re-emphasis on the wealth-generating power of lightly regulated markets.