As the global economic crisis continues to cause damage, some policy makers have called for a more Keynesian approach to current economic problems. In this book, the economists Peter Temin and David Vines provide an accessible introduction to Keynesian ideas that connects Keynes's insights to today's global economy and offers readers a way to understand current policy debates. John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) created the branch of economics now known as macroeconomics. He played a major role in the reconstruction of Europe and the world economy after the Second World War. Keynesian economics came to be identified with efforts to mitigate the Great Depression and with postwar economic policies that helped power a golden age of economic growth. Temin and Vines argue that Keynes also provided a way to understand the interactions among nations, and therein lies his relevance for today's global crisis. Temin and Vines survey economic thinking before Keynes and explain how difficult it was for Keynes to escape from conventional wisdom. They set out the Keynesian analysis of a closed economy and expand the analysis to the international economy, using a few simple graphs to present Keynes's formal analyses in an accessible way. They discuss problems of today's world economy, showcasing the usefulness of a simple Keynesian approach to current economic policy choices. Keynesian ideas, they argue, can lay the basis for a return to economic growth.

Do events of the 1930s carry a message for the 1990s? If there is one key lesson to be learned, Peter Temin points out, it is that political ideology drives economic events. The Great Depression was caused by politicians and policymakers following the wrong economic ideology, not by a mechanical breakdown of the system. "Lessons from the Great Depression "provides an integrated view of the depression, covering the experience in Britain France, Germany, and the United States. It describes the causes of the depression, why it was so widespread and prolonged, and what brought about eventual recovery. Temin finds parallels today in the relentless deflationary course followed by the VS. Federal Reserve Board and the British government in the early 1980s, and in the dogged adherence by the Reagan administration to policies generated by a discredited economic theory - supply side economics. Throughout this informative and highly readable account, Temin searches for and identifies guidelines for the economic and political decisions to be made in the final decade of this century. He considers the proper role of economic and political models and ideologies in the fashioning of economic policy, the advantages and disadvantages of international economic cooperation and long term versus short term focus in the making of economic policy Peter Temin is Professor of Economics at MIT. "Lessons from the Great Depression "is included in the Lionel Robbins Lecture Series.

AT&T's divestiture was the largest corporate reorganization in history and has had international repercussions. It was a major development in American economic policy, and a prominent part of the deregulation movement of the late 1970s. This study reveals the internal decision-making process at AT&T and explains how private and public interests combined to shape corporate and public policy in late 20th-century America. Temin weaves the strands of politics, economics, business, and law into an accessible narrative history that will be of interest to the general reader who wants to know about government business interaction and how it affects American citizens. Temin portrays divestiture as a great experiment in public policy, competition, openness, and international policy. He concludes that the experiment has been a mix of deliberate design and uncontrollable forces whose outcome was not foreseen.