Samuelson, Keynes and the Search for a General Theory of Economics

Responding to the claims Keynes made in his “General Theory”, economists debated whetherKeynesian economics or classical economicswas more general. This paper argues the concept of generality underlying most of this literature differs from that underlying the neoclassical synthesis proposed by Paul Samuelson in “Economics”, and that this in turn differed from the notion of generality found in his “Foundations of Economic Analysis”. No fewer than three ideas of what it means to have a general theory are involved.