An Assessment of Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller’s Assessment of J M Keynes’s a Treatise on Probability and Its Connection to the General Theory: Correct in General, but Incorrect on Specifics

41 Pages Posted: 24 Feb 2019

See all articles by Michael Emmett Brady

Michael Emmett Brady

California State University, Dominguez Hills

Date Written: February 8, 2019

Abstract

Probability (1921), as well as its connections to the later General Theory (1936), that is correct. However, practically all of the specifics listed by Shiller, used to support his generally correct conclusions, involve either errors of omission or commission. Shiller’s assessment is based on either a sound reading of Part I of the A Treatise on Probability (1921) alone or the literature on the A Treatise on Probability that has been written by economists since the late 1970’s dealing with Part I of the A Treatise on Probability (1921), but which overlooks the remaining four Parts of the A Treatise on Probability, especially Parts II and V.

An additional source that is generally overlooked by economists is the 1936-37-1938 correspondence between Hugh Townshend and J M Keynes. Only Townshend grasped the fundamental importance of chapter 20 of the General Theory, as well as the importance of Keynes’s “non-numerical” (interval valued) probabilities and Keynes’s concept of the weight of the evidence as being the main foundation upon which Keynes had erected his Liquidity Preference Theory of the rate of interest.

Keywords: A Treatise on Probability, Interval Valued Probability, Inexact Measurement Approximation, Precise Versus Imprecise Probability

JEL Classification: B10, B12, B14, B16, B20, B22

Suggested Citation

Brady, Michael Emmett, An Assessment of Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller’s Assessment of J M Keynes’s a Treatise on Probability and Its Connection to the General Theory: Correct in General, but Incorrect on Specifics (February 8, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3331008 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3331008

Michael Emmett Brady (Contact Author)

California State University, Dominguez Hills ( email )

1000 E. Victoria Street, Carson, CA
Carson, CA 90747
United States

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