Every time the economy goes through a period of crisis, Keynes’ name is called upon by economists and politicians from diverse backgrounds. However, 70 years after the publication of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, specialists are still far—maybe everyday further—from reaching agreement about the genuine contents of Keynes’ most important work. This controversy has been marked by a paradoxical turn: it is above all the literature about Keynes which, in the last decades, has imposed the terms of the debate, while The General Theory lacks readers. Accused by both its detractors and admirers of being a confusing book that is inconsistent and even plagued with logical errors, the most important contribution of the most influential economist of the 20th century has been condemned to be forgotten or, at best, to live uncomfortably in the voices of those who have spoken on his behalf. This book is the result of rigorous critical research which reconstructs the spectrum of discussion surrounding Keynes’ main work. The book begins by describing the historical background and the state of the pre-Keynesian economic theory, subsequently immersing the reader in a concise but detailed—as well as innovative— interpretation of the original text. The revision of some of the main interpretative currents prepares the field for the book’s ultimate contribution: the identification of the fundamentals that sustain the analytical structure of The General Theory. At the same time, this exploration of the theoretical fundamentals of The General Theory makes this book an original intervention on the genesis and relevance of the divide between micro and macroeconomics—a division that has been fully accepted by contemporary macro theorists.

This book makes economic concepts more accessible to all those who want to understand the “logic” behind economics, and tries to go a step further in explaining economic analysis and its usefulness. To do so, it begins by analysing the economy the smallest and most detailed perspective, Microeconomics. Once the criteria for the individual economic decisions have been defined, it will move on to analyse how the economic activities of a country are measured and its main economic problems at an aggregate level, i.e. Macroeconomics and afterwards, it gives greater dimension to the analysis, moving the macroeconomic analysis of a country to an analysis of the International Economy. In short, in order to reach our final analysis and understand international economic relations, we must first understand how economic decisions are made at an individual level, as it is the sum of individual decisions that shape the global economic structure.

This book is about how the distribution of income changes during the process of income development. Understanding development and the process of poverty reduction requires understanding not only how total income grows but also how its distribution behaves over time. The authors propose a decomposition of differences in entire distributions of household incomes, shedding new light on the powerful, and often conflicting, forces that underpin the changes in poverty and inequality that accompany the process of economic development. This approach is applied to three East Asian countries -- Indonesia, Malaysia, and China -- and to four in Latin America -- Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.

The international economic order created at Bretton Woods in 1944 was not crafted with the developing countries principally in mind. Moreover, the nature of the world community has changed profoundly in the last half-century. The problems and opportunities of developing countries have moved to centre stage in today's global economy. The 16 contributors to this volume examine ways in which the international economic system could be reformed in order better to meet the needs and aspirations of the developing world in the coming decades.