John Maynard Keynes
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John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, (Template:PronEng) (5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946) was a British economist whose ideas have been a central influence on modern macroeconomics, both in theory and practice. He advocated interventionist government policy, by which governments would use fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of business cycles, economic recessions, and depressions. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots.
In the 1930s, Keynes spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking, overturning the older ideas of neoclassical economics that held that free markets would automatically provide full employment as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands. Following the outbreak of World War II Keynes's ideas concerning economic policy were adopted by leading Western economies. During the 1950s and 1960s, the success of Keynesian economics was so resounding that almost all capitalist governments adopted its policy recommendations.
Keynes's influence waned in the 1970s, due to critiques from Milton Friedman and other economists who were less optimistic about the ability of interventionist government policy to positively regulate the business cycle.
