Profile Major Works Resources

Don Patinkin, 1922-1995.

Photo of D.Patinkin

Trained at Chicago under the tutelage of Oskar Lange and half-participating in the goings-on at the Cowles Commission next door, Don Patinkin emerged as one of the foremost authorities on monetary theory in the post-war year. His remarkable dissertation, Money, Interest and Prices (1956, greatly expanded in its 2nd edition in 1965) is an incomparable tour-de-force, plumbing the depths of economics and drawing up points which would later be of interest to many different fields - such as a disequilibrium formulation of macroeconomics, the problems arising from the distinction between stocks and flows, stability and path-dependency of equilibria, etc. His 1956 treatise remains a unique example of Neo-Keynesian theory at its best.

Patinkin's central thesis in 1956 (already announced in a series of articles from 1948 to 1954) was the integration of monetary theory and Walrasian value theory. This task not only became central to Neo-Keynesian economics but was also instrumental in giving birth to various strands of Post-Walrasian theory. That integration, which had long eluded the marginalists, rested on the abandonement of Say's Law and the placing of money in the utility function - thus violating the principle of homogeneity of demand. The Quantity Theory, Patinkin claimed, indeed could not work without that violation.

The "Patinkin Controversy" highlighted the glaring inability of  Neoclassical theory to satisfactorily incorporate money and led to a reassessment of the micro-macro link by the Post-Walrasians in the 1960s and 1970s as well as numerous attempts to reformulate a modern theory of money and credit.

Patinkin was also instrumental (1948, 1949) in constructing the "rigidity" interpretation of Keynes that was to become central to the Neo-Keynesian synthesis. While recurrently engaged in the monetary debate he began, Don Patinkin, in his later years, became a remarkable scholar of J.M. Keynes, producing two remarkable books (1976, 1982) and a series of papers which challenged the Post Keynesian monopoly on interpretation. His parallel work on the history of the Chicago School (1981) also challenged Friedman's claims that he was working in its "oral tradition". Don Patinkin worked at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for most of his post-Chicago life.

 

  

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Major works of Don Patinkin

  • "Mercantilism and the Readmission of Jews in England", 1946, Jewish Social Studies.
  • "Multiple-Plant Firms, Cartels and Imperfect Competition", 1947, QJE.
  • "Relative Prices, Say's Law, and the Demand for Money", 1948, Econometrica. [cwls]
  • "Price Flexibility and Full Employment", 1948, AER.
  • "The Indeterminacy of Absolute Prices in Classical Economic Theory", 1949, Econometrica. [cwls]
  • "Involuntary Unemployment and the Keynesian Supply Function", 1949, EJ. [cwls]
  • "A Reconsideration of the General Equilibrium Theory of Money", 1950, RES.
  • "The Invalidity of Classical Monetary Theory", 1951, Econometrica.
  • "Further Considerations of the General Equilibrium Theory of Money", 1951, RES.
  • "The Limitations of Samuelson's `Correspondence Principle'", 1952, Metroeconomica.
  • "Wicksell's `Cumulative Process'", 1952, EJ.
  • "Dichotomies of the Pricing Process in Economic Theory", 1954, Economica.
  • "Keynesian Economics and the Quantity Theory", 1954, in Kurihara, editor, Post-Keynesian Economics.
  • "Monetary and Price Developments in Israel", 1955, Scripta Hierosolymitana.
  • Money, Interest and Prices: An integration of monetary and value theory., 1956. [1965 2nd ed] [1989 abridged ed, intro]
  • "Liquidity Preference and Loanable Funds: Stock and flow analysis", 1958, Economica.
  • "Secular Price Movements and Economic Development: Some theoretical aspects", in Bonne, editor, The Challenge of Development.
  • The Israel Economy: The first decade, 1959.
  • "Financial Intermediaries and the Logical Structure of Monetary Theory", 1961, AER.
  • "On the Economic Theory of Price Indices", 1961, Economic Development and Cultural Change.
  • "Demand Curves and the Consumer's Surplus", 1963, in Christ et al., Measurement in Economics.
  • "An Indirect-Utility Approach to the Theory of Money, Assets nad Savings", 1965, in Hahn and Brechling, editors, Theory of Interest Rates.
  • "The Role of Money in a Simple Growth Model", with D. Levhari, 1968, AER.
  • "Money and Wealth: A review article", 1969, JEL.
  • "The Chicago Tradition, the Quantity Theory of Money and Friedman", 1969, JMCB.
  • "On the Short-Run Non-Neutrality of Money in the Quantity Theory", 1972, BNLQR.
  • "Friedman as a Quantity Theorist and Keynesian Economics", 1972, JPE.
  • "Reflections on the Neoclassical Dichotomy", 1972, Canadian JE.
  • Studies in Monetary Economics, 1972.
  • "On the Monetary Economics of Chicagoans and Non-Chicagoans", 1973, Southern EJ.
  • "Frank Knight as Teacher", 1973, AER.
  • "In Search of the Wheel of Wealth", 1973, AER.
  • "Keynesian Monetary Theory and the Cambridge School", 1974, in Johnson and Nobay, editors, Issues in Monetary Theory.
  • "The Role of the Liquidity Trap in Keynesian Economics", 1974, BNLQR.
  • "The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: From the Tract to the General Theory", 1975, EJ.
  • Keynes's Monetary Thought: A study of its development, 1976.
  • "Keynes and Econometrics: On the interaction between the macroeconomic revolutions of the interwar period", 1976, Econometrica.
  • "The Process of Writing the General Theory: A critical survey", 1977, in Patinkin and Leith, editors, Keynes, Cambridge and the General Theory.
  • "Relation Between Keynesian Economics and the Stockholm School", 1978, Swedish JE.
  • "Some Observations on Ohlin's 1933 Article", 1978, HOPE.
  • "Keynes's Aggregate Supply Function: A plea for common sense", 1978, HOPE.
  • Keynes, Cambridge and the General Theory, 1978.
  • "Keynes and Chicago", 1979, JLawE.
  • "A Study of Keynes's Theory of Effective Demand", 1979, Economic Inquiry.
  • "The Development of Keynes's Policy Thinking", 1979, in Greenfield et al., Economic Theory for Economic Efficiency.
  • "New Materials on the Development of Keynes's Monetary Thought", 1980, HOPE.
  • Essays On and In the Chicago Tradition, 1981.
  • Anticipations of the General Theory? And other essays on Keynes, 1982.
  • "On Different Interpretations of the General Theory", 1989, Proceedings of the British Academy
  • "On the General Theory", [ucla wp]
  • "The Keynesian Heritage of Economics", 1993, in Walters, editor, Critique of Keynesian Economics
  • Quantity Theory of Money from Locke to Keynes and Friedman, 1995, with M. Blaug, D.P. O'Brien, W. Eltis.

 
HET

 
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Resources on Don Patinkin

  • Guide to Don Patinkin Papers at Duke.
  • The Patinkin-Hicks correspondence by Stephen Meardon at Duke.
  • Patinkin obituary in NY Times, 1995:
  • Patinkin obituary in Independent 1995
  • Patinkin obituary in Chicago Tribute, 1995
  • "Don Patinkin and the Origins of Postwar Monetary Orthodoxy", by Perry M. Mehrling, 2001 [pdf]
  • "Don Patinkin's Contributions to Monetary Theory", by N. Liviatan, 2006, Israeli ER [pdf]
  • "Don Israel Patinkin", by D. Rozborilova, 2003 Profiles of World Economists [pdf]
  • "Early Patinkin-Friedman Correspondence" by Robert Leeson, 1998, JHET
  • "Patinkin, Johnson and 'The Shadow of Friedman'" by Robert Leeson, 2000, HOPE
  • "Patinkin, Walras and the Money-in-Utility-Function tradition" by Pascal Bridel, 2002, EJHET [pdf]
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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