Michał Kalecki (22nd June 1899-18 April 1970) was one of the greatest Polish economists. He specialised in macroeconomics. For most of his life he worked at the Institute of Business Cycles and Prices in Warsaw. He is referred to as 'one of the most distinguished economists of the 20th century'and was sometimes regarded as the 'left-wing' Keynes Polish language he was (and is) much less known to the English-speaking world then Keynes.^*" target="_blank" >^*" target="_blank" >[http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1586481037&id=kWuNqqrMYdAC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=%22Michal+Kalecki%22&sig=azNM_pldnHZROShNWMBhpxUwo3A

Life and work

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Kalecki's works from 1933 to 1935 introduced many principles stated in John Maynard Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (published February, 1936). However, as Kalecki's works were published in Polish language (and a few of them in French as well), they were thus unknown and unrecognised by the wider world. Kalecki's claim of precendence to Keynes, published in his 1936 article was again forgotten as the article was untranslated to English.

Only his later works were published in English, but the previous 2-3 years delay have cost him much fame, which fall to wider read English publications of John Maynard Keynes. Eventually, Kalecki's theories on business cycles (1935, 1937, 1939, 1943, 1954), did gain him some fame for their advancement of the use of mathematical dynamics in economics. In his works he used both Classical and Marxist concepts, relying extensively on the theories of class conflict, income distribution and imperfect competition. Those very concepts would later gain much popularity with the Cambridge Keynesians school, especially with economists such as Joan Violet Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor and Richard M. Goodwin, and be used within the modern Post-Keynesian economics school.

In his study of Marxian-type unemployment and business cycle he blamed government inefficiency for unemployment.

In Cost-of-production theory of value, he distinguished between sectors with "cost-determined prices" (such as manufacturing and services) and those with "demand-determined prices" (such as agriculture and raw material extraction).

Kalecki studied both the capitalist economy in the pre-war Second Polish Republic, and the communist economy in the post-war People's Republic of Poland.

In the first half of 1990s Oxford University Press published 7 tomes of Collected Works of Michal Kalecki, referring to him as 'one of the most distinguished economists of the 20th century'. Much of his works were translated into English for the first time in this collection.^*

Publications

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1. "Mr Keynes's Predictions", 1932, Przeglad Socjialistyczny.
2. An Essay on the Theory of the Business Cycle, 1933.
3. "Essai d'une theorie du mouvement cyclique des affaires", 1935, Revue d'economie politique.
4. "A Macrodynamic Theory of Business Cycles", 1935, Econometrica.
5. "The Mechanism of Business Upswing", 1935, Polska Gospodarcza.
6. "Some Remarks on Keynes's Theory", 1936, Ekonomista.
7. "A Theory of the Business Cycle", 1937, RES.
8. "A Theory of Commodity, Income and Capital Taxation", 1937, EJ.
9. "The Principle of Increasing Risk", 1937, Economica.
10. "The Determinants of Distribution of the National Income", 1938, Econometrica.
11. Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations, 1939.
12. "A Theory of Profits", 1942, EJ.
13. Studies in Economic Dynamics, 1943.
14. "Political Aspects of Full Employment", 1943, Political Quarterly.
15. "Professor Pigou on the Classical Stationary State", 1944, EJ.
16. "Three Ways to Full Employment", 1944 in Economics of Full Employment.
17. "A Note on Long Run Unemployment", 1950, RES.
18. Theory of Economic Dynamics: An essay on cyclical and long- run changes in capitalist economy, 1954.
19. "Observations on the Theory of Growth", 1962, EJ.
20. Studies in the Theory of Business Cycles, 1933-1939, 1966.
21. "The Problem of Effective Demand with Tugan-Baranovski and Rosa Luxemburg", 1967, Ekonomista.
22. "The Marxian Equations of Reproduction and Modern Economics", 1968, Social Science Information.
23. "Trend and the Business Cycle", 1968, EJ.
24. "Class Struggle and the Distribution of National Income", 1971, Kyklos.
25. Selected Essays on the Dynamics of the Capitalist Economy, 1933-1970, 1971.
26. Selected Essays on the Economic Growth of the Socialist and the Mixed Economy, 1972.
27. The Last Phase in the Transformation of Capitalism, 1972.
28. Essays on Developing Economies, 1976.
29. Collected Works of Michal Kalecki (1-6), Oxford University Press, 1990s, ISBN 1) 0198285388, 2) 0198286643, 3) 0198286651, 4) 019828666X, 5) 0198286678, 6) 0198286686

See also

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• Neo-Ricardianism

References

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• Biography

Further reading

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• Zdzislaw L. Sadowski, Adam Szeworski, Kalecki's Economics Today, Routledge (UK), 2004, ISBN 0415299934
• J. E. King, A History of Post Keynesian Economics Since 1936, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2003, ISBN 1843766507. See chapter 2, 'An economist from Poland', p.35-55
• Geoffrey Colin Harcourt, R. A. Riach, P. A. Riach (ed.), A "Second Edition" of the General Theory, Routledge (UK), 1997, ISBN 0415149436. See chapter 38 by Peter Kriesler, Keynes, Kalecki and The General Theory

External links

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• Kalecki Distribution Cycle
• Peter Kriesler's Keynes, Kalecki and the General Theory"
• Peter Kriesler's "Microfoundations: A Kaleckian perspective"
• Malcolm Sawyer's "The Kaleckian Analysis and the New Mellium"
• Review (by Gary Dymski) of Sebastiani's book, Kalecki and Unemployment Equilibrium in JEL

1899 births | 1970 deaths | Polish economists

Michał Kalecki | Michał Kalecki | ミハウ・カレツキ | Michał Kalecki