Works
Although he was a president of the American Economic Association, Galbraith was considered an iconoclast by many economists. This is because he rejected the technical analyses and mathematical models of neoclassical economics as being divorced from reality. Rather, following Thorstein Veblen, he believed that economic activity could not be distilled into inviolable laws, but rather was a complex product of the cultural and political milieu in which it occurs. In particular, he believed that important factors such as advertising, the separation between corporate ownership and management, oligopoly, and the influence of government and military spending had been largely neglected by most economists because they are not amenable to axiomatic descriptions. In this sense, he worked as much in political economy as in classical economics.
His work included several best selling works throughout the fifties and sixties. After his retirement, he remained in the public consciousness by continuing to write new books and revise his old works as well as presenting a major series on economics for BBC television in 1977 The Age of Uncertainty.
In addition to his books, he wrote hundreds of essays and a number of novels. Among his novels, A Tenured Professor achieved particular critical acclaim.
He wrote book reviews, e.g., of The Report from Iron Mountain (a 1967 satirical book), under the pen name of Herschel McLandress.
Read more about this topic: John Kenneth Galbraith
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.”
—William James (1842–1910)
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“Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)