Game theory has a long history in the political economy of trade policy. Beginning with work by Johnson in the 1950s, trade economists have used these tools to study strategic interactions between governments, interest groups representing industries or factors of production, political parties, and legislators representing different voting districts. Research has focused both on trade policies that have been set noncooperatively, sometimes in response to internal political pressures, and on the negotiation and features of cooperative trade agreements.

Keynes was intensely political. He was an activist, a populariser of economic ideas, an influential Treasury official and seldom for long out of touch with the British prime minister of the day. Economics was never a neutral scientific endeavour, and it makes sense to understand his economics in the light of his political views. Keynes wants to develop a more realistic theory, but even his most abstract work is oriented to providing a better guide to policy. Keynes wrote in the ‘advice to princes’ tradition, offering a better guide for rulers of the existing system. As usual with Keynes, there are ambiguities and his political stance is contested, but it is argued that although Keynes says some different things, he fairly consistently occupies a space bounded on the one hand by a conservatism drawn particularly from Edmund Burke and on the other by British liberalism. The first two sections of the chapter discuss these two influences. The third section discusses alternative claims that Keynes was a socialist, arguing that while there were radical aspects to his thought, Keynes is better understood as a pro-capitalist not a socialist thinker. As the fourth and final section continues, Keynes brings in the state, but in a quite consistently liberal way in that he still conceives the requisite level of state intervention as being minimal, albeit while raising the perceived necessary minimum. A specifically British, but also more broadly a national rather than international or global, orientation also informs and limits Keynes’s political economy.

This chapter introduces the two contributions that constitute Part V, “Economics and institutional design”.

Although traditional game theory has a tendency to study games in isolation, strategic interaction in human society involves people engaged in numerous interrelated constellations over time. This chapter studies the role of sanctions and enforcement, and strategies not just to play the game that society presents us with but to change the game itself.

Describes the British government’s ‘Meade Mission’ to the island of Mauritius and its subsequent report.

I met Robert Aumann (*1930) in his office at the Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The place has an interesting architecture; it is a square building with a large opening in the middle, so everyone could basically see everyone else’s office, enabling a lot of interaction. The green plants in the building nicely complemented the brown wood, together giving the feeling of comfort. Aumann’s office was located in a central spot in the building. When I entered, he sat behind his desk, surrounded by hundreds of books and papers. Rather small, but with a long white beard and a black suit, he nearly blended in with the shelves. Throughout the whole interview, Aumann remained friendly but at the same time notably affirmative, clearly having strong views – particularly on the status and relevance of game theory not only as a scholarly enterprise but also a basis for political advice and ultimately as a tool to support one’s political views.

Describes further work on postwar planning and discussions of the postwar world with the US administration.

Describes life and work at the League of Nations.

Continues the account of Meade’s life and work as Professor of Political Economy in Cambridge.

Describes progress towards GATT and Meade’s work before leaving government service.

The introduction describes the structure and rationale of the book. It argues that Keynes should be seen as neither villain nor hero and that while the left should appropriate his ideas with caution, he provides insights at a level of concreteness which Marx’s analysis largely ignored and which were concerned with issues of the modern world which Marx could not have foreseen. A critical Marxist engagement can simultaneously increase the power of Keynes’s insight and enrich Marxism. The introduction describes how, to understand Keynes, whose work is liberally invoked but seldom read, the book first puts Keynes in context, explaining his biography and the extraordinary times in which he lived, his philosophy and his politics. The book describes Keynes’s developing critique of ‘the classics’, of mainstream economics as he found it, and summarises the General Theory. It shows how Keynes provides an enduringly valuable critique of orthodoxy but vital insights rather than a genuinely general theory. The book then develops a Marxist appropriation of Keynes’s insights. It argues that Marxist analysis of unemployment, of money and interest, and of the role of the state can be enriched through such a critical engagement. The book addresses Keynesianism after Keynes, critically reviewing the practices that came to be known as ‘Keynesianism’ and different theoretical traditions that have claimed his legacy. It considers the crisis of the 1970s, the subsequent anti-Keynesian turn, the economic and ecological crises of the twenty-first century, and the prospects of returning to Keynes and Keynesianism.

Describes Meade’s family background and education at preparatory and public schools.