John Maynard Keynes

KEYNES, John May­nard, 1st Baron (1883-1946), economist and math­e­mati­cian, and fa­ther of the mod­ern eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus. His ground­break­ing trea­tise, The Means to Pros­per­i­ty (Macmil­lan, 1933), showed con­clu­sive­ly that counter-cycli­cal pub­lic spend­ing can in­duce pros­per­i­ty dur­ing an eco­nom­ic de­pres­sion. His sem­i­nal work, The Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Em­ploy­ment, In­ter­est and Money (Macmil­lan, 1936), then showed that pros­per­i­ty can be cre­at­ed in any oth­er kind of eco­nom­ic cli­mate, by first con­vert­ing it in­to a de­pres­sion.