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Mistrusting the Free-Market Economy:
Keynes’s Revolution in Economic Thinking
*Maria Cristina Marcuzzo
Abstract
Over twenty-five years have been wasted praising the efficiency of free markets and running econometric tests to prove that economic policies are either ineffectual or even irrelevant, reflecting an academic scene still dominated by the macroeconomics of anti- or pre-Keynesian inspiration that took hold between the 1970s and 1980s. Increasingly sophisticated models were developed to support the argument that government intervention to stabilize the economy was not only unnecessary but actually harmful. The idea of the centrality of changes in aggregate current income (both with positive and negative signs) and its distribution in fuelling or dampening economic growth were forgotten. It is time that we brought Keynes’s ideas back.
Keywords: Keynes; Full Employment; Austerity; General Theory
JEL Classification Number: E12; B21; B31
* This paper draws on several papers which I have written over the years on Keynes and his revolution in
economic thinking and its implications for policy. Some of them are collected in Marcuzzo (2019a); see also Marcuzzo (2010, 2017, 2018a, 2018b, 2019b).
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I. Introduction
Almost thirty years have been wasted praising the efficiency of free markets and running econometric tests to prove that economic policies are either ineffectual or even irrelevant, reflecting an academic scene still dominated by the macroeconomics of anti- or pre-Keynesian inspiration that took hold between the 1970s and 1980s. The neoclassical macroeconomics which had since the 1970s become “mainstream” teaching in the universities was a composite mix:
Not only neoclassical economists like Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas, but
economists of the Austrian School (Friedrich Hayek) and of Public Choice School
(James Buchanan) gained influence, and, with the collaboration of journalists and
other conservative public intellectuals, constructed the neo-liberal ideology based
on old laissez-faire ideas and on a mathematical economics that offered “scientific”
legitimacy to the new credo.(Bresser-Pereira 2009, p.7)
Increasingly sophisticated models were developed to support the argument that government intervention to stabilize the economy was not only unnecessary but actually harmful. In the years of domination of the micro foundations of macroeconomics the Keynesian lessons – the idea of the centrality of changes in aggregate current income (both with both positive and negative signs) and its distribution in fuelling or dampening economic growth – were forgotten. Consumption was modelled on individual maximizing behaviour, over an infinite time horizon and with perfect foresight, relegating real income as determinant of consumption to a negligible role. In several empirical studies the value of the multiplier was found to be less than 1 (Ramey 2011), constituting ample justification to abandon Keynesian arguments for an active fiscal policy.
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The whole set of ideas and policies geared to reducing the size of the state apparatus and deregulating all the markets – and the financial markets in particular – conquered academia, the institutions and the media.
So the space assigned to government intervention shrank in contemporary public opinion; it was the “policy space” opened up by Keynes’s denunciation that market laws are neither natural nor unchangeable. In fact, the guiding spirit of the Keynesian Revolution was that full employment is a goal which can be pursued not by following the free market rules, but by reshaping them by means of public intervention. Keynes’s economics constitutes a set of ideas and policies designed to correct market failure by setting up overseeing institutions; it is not just deficit spending, but a coherent and comprehensive view of the economic system, in which market mechanisms are seen to work imperfectly and economic theory is taken for guidance in forging tools and providing solutions.
This message, widely accepted for thirty years as from the end of the Second World War by all the advanced countries which actively engaged in full employment and welfare policies, was abandoned, giving way to the neo-liberal Restoration which saw the dogmas of individualism and de-regulation prevailing. In what follows I will revisit Keynes’s approach to these matters, arguing that they are still relevant in today’s world.
II. Keynes’s Arguments against Laissez-Faire
Keynes’s main arguments against laissez-faire are, first, there are no forces to harmonize individual interests, and second, aggregate economic behaviour does not have the same outcome as individual economic behaviour, so what is good for the individual may not be good for the whole. If the goal is to change the environment within which individuals
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operate, we ought to change the way we see the economic problem; the means to achieve changes in attitudes is to change the way economists and ordinary people think about it. Keynes believed that the alternative means to improve society rested on persuasion and intellectual ingenuity. In a speech to the House of Lords, on May 23, 1944, he stated: “[for the last twenty years] I have spent my strength to persuade my countrymen and the world at large to change their traditional doctrines and, by taking better thought, to remove the curse of unemployment” (CWK XXVI, p.16).1
Clearly, by “better thought” Keynes meant a theory which might, among other things, open the way to eradicating unemployment, rejecting the doctrine that whatever unemployment there may be is “natural” as long as it is market generated; accordingly, the task of economics, is to “select those variables which can be deliberately controlled and managed by central authority in the kind of system in which we actually live” (CWK VII, p.254).
It is a plea to start investigating the problems involved in seeking to bring about desired end states. Keynes wrote:
it is many generations since men as individuals began to substitute moral and
rational motive as their spring of action in place of blind instinct. They must now
do the same thing collectively. (CWK XVII, p.453)
Letting individuals be guided by self-interest alone – as in Adam Smith’s parable of “the butcher, the brewer and the baker”, whose pursuit of individual profit produces a social good – is not a principle of general validity, rejection of which makes the elimination of unemployment possible; Keynes’s economics is a challenge to the doctrine that whatever unemployment there is – as long as it is market generated – is a level which the same
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market forces – if unimpeded by “rigidities” (any of these: prices, wages, interest rate) would re-establish in the long run.
III. The Nature of Keynes’s Revolution
The General Theory is a revolution in economic thinking, also raising the question as to when and indeed whether government intervention is called for to correct market forces. Since government intervention is usually taken flatly to represent the Keynesian message, it important to clarify the matter further.
Adam Smith had already shown how rules and limitations are needed to prevent market failures: on defence, education and other “public goods” the market simply does not deliver the best. This is not the crux of the matter in the case of Keynes’s subversion of the mainstream approach, but rather the role of effective demand in generating income, increasing production and guaranteeing employment. It is the low level of effective demand, not the rigidity of money wages, which accounts for underemployment equilibrium.
However, Keynes was not in favour of indiscriminate deficit-financed public investments: in the General Theory we do find an apologia for government intervention, but this is to be interpreted in terms of the need to control the total level of investment, through direct or indirect action by a public or semi-public body, always taking into account market incentives, and favouring a climate of business confidence.
Similarly, on the origin and structure of the welfare state, Keynes’s ideas were not represented faithfully (see Backhouse and Bateman 2012). He was not in favour of high taxes to pay for social benefits and pensions, the costs of which ought to be borne by the employers, for it is in their interest to have a fit and healthy labour force (CWK XXVII,
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p.224). He was in favour of making the State accountable to the taxpayer for the goods and services provided, associating “as closely as possible the cost of particular services with the sources out of which they are provided”, for he believed that “this is the only way by which to preserve sound accounting, to measure efficiency, to maintain economy and to keep the public properly aware of what things cost” (CWK XXVII, p.225).
Keynes’s love of paradoxes lies behind the famous proposal of “digging holes in the ground” that, as Joan Robinson tells us, was meant “to penetrate the thick walls of obscurantism of the old laissez-faire orthodoxy”. (Robinson 1964, p.91). The suggestion was for the Treasury to bury bottles filled with banknotes and let private individuals lease the ground, dig out the bottles and pocket the money (CWK VII, p.129).
This is clearly a paradox, against the view that every operation should make a full profit or not be done at all. Keynes’s makes his point – it does not matter how public money is spent, as long as it is spent, since it will generate income and, through the multiplier, the savings necessary to finance the initial expenditure – to illustrate a principle, not to provide a blueprint of “useful” public work schemes. Keynes spelt it out clearly:
it would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are
political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than
nothing. (CWK VII, p.129)
In Keynes’s work we find many sarcastic comments on common prejudices against public spending, which can equally well be applied to today’s defences of austerity programmes. However, Keynes’s approach to the way to fight unemployment should not identified with the welfare state, nor with indiscriminate public spending, with no concern for the government budget, nor with attributing the causes of unemployment to the rigidity of wages and prices, nor indeed with all the other distortions of the General Theory we find in the literature, showing how little it was read or understood.
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Keynes’s argument is summarized in the need for fiscal stimulus to boost the economy from the depths of recession; the burden of the deficit is not seen as the main drawback for government intervention, but as a condition necessary to address a failure in aggregate demand. This argument does not, however, imply unqualified government intervention. Government expenditure is to be finalized to provide enough investment to counterweight a decline in private investment and a level of consumption insufficient to generate the level of aggregate demand necessary to maintain full employment.
Although Keynes’s mistrust of the smooth working of market forces came long before the General Theory, the case for intervention is made there forcefully in relation to aggregate demand failure. However, the policy message in the General Theory is to sustain the level of investment – more “stabilizing business confidence” (Bateman 1996, p.148) than debt-financed public works. His reliance on “socializing investment” rather than fiscal policy aiming at smoothing out consumption levels over the cycle shows his concern for the size of the deficit and the importance attributed to market incentives to bring about the desired level of employment. “If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments [of production] and the basic rate of reward to those who own them”, he wrote in the General Theory, “it will have accomplished all that is necessary” (CWK VII, p.378).
IV. The Methodological Divide
As in Keynes’s own time, today the prevailing orthodox view among policymakers is still that all unemployment is the result of “rigidities in the labour market”, denying demand management a role in reducing unemployment. Keynes is relevant to the world of today precisely because the so-called market mechanisms have failed to deliver and some “better
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thought” is still needed. There is also a methodological divide between Keynes’s economics and the so-called Keynesian economics.
The so-called Keynesian policies of “stop and go” or “fine tuning” rested on a representation of the economic system as a mechanism which can be relied upon to produce the desired results. According to these recipes, a cheap money policy cannot fail to encourage investment, given the inverse relationship between investment and the rate of interest and the assumed stability of the liquidity preference schedule. There is always a trade-off between unemployment and inflation, ensured by the negative slope of the Phillips curve and by expectations being generally adaptive (workers always expect the future rate of increase in money prices to be as in the past). Thus, Keynesian economics or, as it is also known, the neo-classical synthesis, interpreted Keynes’s message as a faith in managing the economy to achieve desired goals, such as a high level of employment and a low level of inflation, and relied on a model of the economy which could be empirically tested and whose predictions could be used to adjust instruments and tools of economic policy.
The stress on forecasting, measurement and empirical testing was intended to enhance the scientific aspect of economics, where again “scientific” meant resemblance to the physical sciences, to their rigour and predictive power. The premise of a scientific approach was interpreted as the possibility of a clear demarcation between values and statements of facts, between science and ideology, between analysis and prescriptions. In his 1932 book Robbins had declared economics to be a science only is so far as it was value-free; Popper (1935) provided what seemed to be the solution to the demarcation problem, identifying what scientific status required. In Keynes’s own time this view was challenged, but never gained consensus among economists. In fact, Friedman’s insistence on prediction as the only test for economic theories and Samuelson’s mathematization of economics gave a new boost to faith in the imitation of the physical sciences as far as the
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chosen method of scientific inquiry is concerned. This approach is still the most widely accepted within the professional community.
Keynes was fighting against attempts to assimilate economics to a natural science. For instance, he wrote to Harrod, on July 4, 1938: “[...] against Robbins, economics is essentially a moral science and not a natural science. That is to say, it employs introspection and judgements of value” (CWK XIV, p.297).
The most significant implication of Keynes’s rejection of the mechanical view of economics as a discipline aiming to discover “scientific” laws and be wertfrei, is the claim that “moral thinking” and “moral values” (CWK XXVII, p.387) are embedded in any social philosophy. The essential point is how ends can best be implemented and which institutions are more apt to the purpose of the social goal; Keynes believed that alternative means to improve society rested on persuasion and intellectual ingenuity.
As he foresaw in the famous letter to G. B. Shaw, he had written the book on economic theory “which will largely revolutionise [...] the way the world thinks about economic problems” (CWK XIII, p.492). Interestingly, in the same letter he had added: “When my new theory has been duly assimilated and mixed with politics and feeling and passions [...] there will be a great change” (ibid., p.493). Far from pleading the scientific superiority of his own theory, he entrusted “politics, feelings and passions” to get the message through.
V. Means and Ends
Keynes believed in politics as a means to promote the overall realization of given values or state of affairs; this means that rules have to be set for given goals and the relevant question becomes how these goals are chosen and how rigid or fixed the rules should be.
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Keynes rejected the abstract and formal conception of the rules, as Carabelli and De Vecchi (1999, p.286) aptly observed:
rules are conventions, human artifices, devices… Keynes thinks that one can play with them, influence them, so as to reduce the social damage caused by them as far
as possible; or, if nothing better can be done, by substituting them with other less
socially harmful conventions.
It follows that, for Keynes:
The reformer is not he who would impose his own values on society, but he who
understands better than others the potential for change in the moral conventions of
society itself, and acts in order to affect such change. (Carabelli and De Vecchi
1999, p.291)
Two questions then arise: a) where does the “better understanding” of the reformer come from; b) which are the appropriate actions to change the moral conventions of society.
The answers to these questions are scattered among Keynes’s early writings on ethics and politics and his mature work in economics, but can also be found by reviewing his activities as policy adviser and even his practical experience in various institutions. Keynes attached great importance to expert advice, to “superior knowledge”, since he was persuaded that addressing market failures was possible by placing in charge of purpose-designed institutions people – often chosen among his group of friends – who were of high moral standards and fortitude. In a famous letter to Hayek, he wrote:
Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly,
which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel
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To think and to feel “rightly” or “wrongly” is contingent on two elements: knowledge and values. Skidelsky explained why Keynes was “a meritocratic elitist” (Skidelsky 2009, p.223) and others have shared this description. For instance, O’Donnell makes the interesting point that:
Keynes’s elitism [is] of an essentially intellectual variety, as distinct from those elitisms stemming from political, financial or military power. With individual
varying in abilities, and with rationality linked to logical insight and knowledge,
the presumption is strong that those with greatest mental power and education will
have the greatest capacity in their given fields. (O’Donnell 1989, p.66)
It was the belief in the rationality of ends as well as of means that led Keynes to value “superior knowledge” as the guide to political actions. Superior knowledge can be acquired through experience and education, and only those who have acquired it can be entrusted with the management of affairs or with the enactment of reforms.
We can take as two examples the institutions designed by Keynes to take care of the international payments system, to see how he envisaged the governance and role assigned to experts, and his belief in the middle way between discretion and rules.
From 1926 to 1943 Keynes repeatedly advocated government storage of foodstuffs and raw materials, and from 1938 onward elaborated various buffer-stocks schemes as a means to stabilize prices. Keynes ascribed such fluctuations to the “inability of the market to carry surplus stocks” (CWK XIX, p.549) and hence advocated government intervention to “supplement the deficient carrying power of the market” (CWK XIX, p.550; see Fantacci et al. 2012). For the management of buffer stocks, he trusted that people who had acquired experience in the futures market could handle prices:
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An international body would be set up called the Commod Control on which the
governments of the leading producing and consuming countries would be
represented. The management would be independent and expert, and the interests
of consumers equally represented with those of producers.
[…]
It should not be technically difficult to fix the complex of prices in proper relation
to the basic price, provided a proper discretion is allowed to independent experts,
for these margins are already established by trade practice in the management of
futures markets. (CWK XXVII, p.115, italics added).
In the case of the International Currency Union, as in other instances, Keynes suggested a middle way between rules and discretion in the management of affairs:
Perhaps the most difficult question to determine is how much to decide by rule and
how much to leave to discretion. If rule prevails, the liabilities attaching to
membership of the system are definite, whilst the responsibilities of central
management are reduced to a minimum. On the other hand, liabilities which would
require the surrender by legislation of too much of the discretion, normally
inherent in a Government, will not be readily undertaken by ourselves or by the
United States. If discretion prevails, how far can the ultimate decision be left to the
individual members and how far to the central management? If the individual
members are too free, indiscipline may result and unwarrantable liberties be taken.
But if it is to the central management that the discretions are given, too heavy a
weight of responsibility may rest on it, and it may be assuming the exercise of
powers which it has not the strength to implement. If rule prevails, the scheme can
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better in practice. All this is the typical problem of any super-national authority
[…]. Only by collective wisdom and discussion can the right compromise be reached between law and licence (Keynes’s Plan, February 1942, in CWK XXV,
pp.116-117).
VI. The Role of Experts
But we also have his reliance on “superior knowledge” in the conduct of his speculative activities on the Stock Exchange as evidence of his trust in expert assistance in providing information serving to guide investment choices. This is an aspect worth stressing. Much has been written about Keynes’s view on speculation in financial markets, the nature of herd behaviour and casino gambling which often characterizes it. While this certainly is supported by the evidence of what he wrote, famously in the General Theory, one should not be led to conclude that Keynes did not believe in rational behaviour based on informed knowledge. In fact, if we look at his investment activity we can see how reliance on data collection, experts’ views and personal acquaintance with a given firm or industry became increasingly important for him (Marcuzzo 2019b).
He did not view financial risk as being associated with a frequentist probability; in his approach to risk management, he did not rely on mathematical calculation but on rational evaluation, thoroughly grounded on the quantity, quality and reliability of the information possessed, consistently with his theory of “logical probability” and his concept of the “weight of arguments” (CWK VIII; CWK XIV, pp.109-123). While the standard rule of behaviour is portfolio diversification in a mathematical approach to probability, in a
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“logical probability” perspective Keynes’s choice was to concentrate his investments in the few assets for which he had information characterized by a high “degree of confidence”.
He felt he was an exception in the category of stock market investors given his focus on the “ultimate prospects” of an asset:
It sometimes seems to me that apart from the noble army of investors who never
read the newspapers I am almost the only person left who has an investment rather
than a speculative mentality! On every Board I sit on the great majority are
influenced far more by the daily fluctuations which they read of in the newspaper
than by any reasoned calculation of yield or ultimate prospects. (Letter from
Keynes to F.C. Scott, June 7, 1937, KP: PC/1/4/306)2
Not only did Keynes adopt this as his preferred style of investment behaviour (at least from the 1930s on) in both his sterling and dollar denominated investment, but he also saw the widespread tendency of the stock market investors to be much more influenced by temporary changes in prices than long-term yields as the main cause of the great instability of the financial markets. In Chapter 12 of the General Theory, for instance, he wrote:
The spectacle of modern investment markets has sometimes moved me towards the
conclusion that to make the purchase of an investment permanent and indissoluble,
like marriage, except by reason of death or other grave cause, might be a useful
remedy for our contemporary evils. For this would force the investor to direct his
mind to the long-term prospects and to those only. (CWK VII, p.160)
2 Keynes Papers are kept at King’s College, Modern Archives, Cambridge, UK (catalogue at
https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD/GBR/0272/PP/JMK; quoted archive numbers refer to this catalogue).
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This is exactly what he did, after an initial and unsuccessful exposure to speculation in currencies and commodities in the 1920s, in his investments in the London and New York Stock exchanges from the early 1930 onwards.
VII. Reasonable Actions
In politics rational arguments are tools for implementing ends, but in order to be effective they need to be persuasive. The role of persuasion is that of inducing behaviour to conform to goals that are attainable only by moving beyond individualistic motivation or utilitarian calculation, which is generally perceived as attainable by pursuing self-interest. In the process of both elaborating and transmitting ideas, persuasion calls for ability in reasoning, the gift of arousing passions, and a particular flair in personal relationships. Again, the quality of persuasiveness is to be found in a few people who are not necessarily successful in their endeavour, especially when confronted with situations in which self-interest, “popular sentiment” and ignorance prevail.
Reasonable actions are those which conform to goals that are attainable only by moving beyond individualistic motivation or utilitarian calculation. Unlike zero-sum games, which are the results of a vision of society and of a conception of economics based on the principle of self-interest as a guiding line of thought and action. Keynes systematically applied the term reasonable, often in contrast with the reasons of the victor or creditor, to a guideline not characterized by utilitarian calculation, which may prove only apparently to be in the individual interest. Thus reasonable action is guided by judgment, taking into account contingent, mutable circumstances as far as our knowledge can encompass the facts.
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The same term was used by Rawls in defining the characteristics of a plural and just society. In his book Political Liberalism we find this definition (Rawls 1993, p.58): “The reasonable is an element of the idea of society as a system of fair cooperation and that its fair terms be reasonable for all to accept is part of its idea of reciprocity”. But how exactly are we to take the term reasonable? Habermas interprets it as distinguishing between those who accept the principle of fairness and cooperation and those who act rationally on the basis of their own (i.e. individual) conception of what is good and just. Thus being reasonable is a moral quality lacking in those who behave in a solely rational way. To quote Rawls again:
What rational agents lack is the particular form of moral sensibility that underlies
the desire to engage in fair cooperation as such, and to do so on terms that others as
equals might reasonably be expected to endorse. (Rawls 1993, p.51)
This is, also according to Habermas, the source of the distinction between moral and ethical questions (Habermas 1995, p.125). Questions of justice or moral questions admit of justifiable answers – justifiable in the sense of rational acceptability – because they are concerned with what, from an ideally expanded perspective, is in the equal interest of all. Ethical questions, by contrast, do not admit of such impartial treatment because they refer to what, from the first-person perspective, is in the long run good for me or for us – even if this is not equally good for all. In conclusion, the sense Keynes attributes to the term reasonable shows a strong analogy with the quality described by Rawls and interpreted by Habermas as moral, but it is anchored on the structure of his economic theory.
On the contrary, the rational pursuit of individual interest in economics, according to the utilitarian credo, does not guarantee the collective good which Keynes identified with full employment. It is an assumption which leads to a logical fallacy, which Keynes identifies as the fallacy of composition. For instance, attempts to reduce real wages or increase the
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saving of individuals on the basis of an individual rationale will not achieve the aim if undertaken by all, since aggregate prevails over individual effect. Another example is when the level of aggregate demand is kept drastically low within a country to satisfy the reasons of the victor or creditor, leading to a deflationary potential for all the economies. Thus lack reasonableness leads to consequences not only morally reprehensible but also economically disastrous for anyone who has looked for guidance and action solely from the individual point of view.
In Keynes’s economics the impasse of failure to achieve the aggregate effect of full utilization of resources can be remedied with a set of direct and indirect instruments designed to overcome individual inertia and generate the level of demand necessary to raise the level of employment. His “vision” of the future of capitalist society rested on the belief that freedom from economic constraints would allow the vast majority of the population to pursue happiness and enjoyment in their lives. “It is not any fear of a failure of physical productivity to provide an adequate material standard of life that fills me with foreboding”, he remarked, addressing the House of Lords in February 1943:
The real problems of the future are first of all the maintenance of peace, of
international co-operation and amity, and beyond that the profound moral and
social problems of how to organize material abundance to yield up the fruits of a
good life. (CWK XXVII, p.261)
As he saw it, the goal of an ethically rational society could be achieved by overcoming the economic and moral obstacles which encumbered contemporary society. Persuasion was the primary tool of political action, according to Keynes offering the means to given ends. These means were be grounded in sound knowledge and experience, which are the basis of trust and confidence in expert advice and counsel. He wrote: “The first condition of
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successful control and useful interference of whatever kind from above is that it must be done with knowledge” (CWK XIX, p.643).
VII. Concluding Remarks
Keynes’s view of economics, whereby full employment was the instrument or “social primary” good for a good life, was intertwined with beliefs in political action. His prescription for a better society lies in his appeal to set rules and limitations in the market arena, not letting individual self-interest prevail, and put some governing bodies in charge of filling the gap when deficient aggregate demand occurs, so that the acquisition of material goods and the fruition of the enjoyments of life be not a privilege of the few but the conquest of civilization.
His legacy is the understanding that market-oriented processes are not “natural”, and any pretence by economists to describe the economic system as governed by general or necessary laws is unwarranted, as is the assumption that no other values can be substituted for them by devising an appropriate institutional environment. In this respect, “social stability and social justice” were for Keynes the pillars of his economic policies.
This seems particularly relevant today, as we face the greatest challenge after the Second World War, namely how to address the economic and social effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The forecasts are of a dramatic drop in GDP around the world, mass unemployment, stagnation and poverty. The free market ideology is crumbling in the midst of the social and economic problems that governments are called upon to solve. Reliance on market mechanisms will not be enough, especially to tackle the issue of increasing inequality that this crisis has brought with it.
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What is needed is co-ordinated action to stimulate aggregate demand, address social and economic inequalities, remove structural imbalances and promote sustainable growth. It is indeed an ambitious programme, also involving international cooperation and political stability. So it may be appropriate to conclude by quoting a passage from Keynes’s How to Pay for the War in which he calls upon “the leaders of opinion in all parties” to “propose a plan conceived in the spirit of social justice, a plan which uses a time of general sacrifice, not as an excuse for postponing desirable reforms, but as an opportunity for moving further than we have moved hitherto towards reducing inequality” (CWK IX, p.373).
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Maria Cristina Marcuzzo
Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy
