Abstract

distraction that leads innocent Post Keynesians into “classical sin.” Davidson (1994, 1996) argues that core Post Keynesian (PK) ideas such as that insufficient aggregate demand arise from fundamental uncertainty in a monetary economy do not depend on nonlinearity or complexity, that these core concepts are axiomatically and ontologically true, and that the inability of agents to forecast well in dynamically complex situations reflects mere epistemological problems of insufficient computational abilities. Thus complex dynamics is merely a classical stalking horse. This writer (Rosser, 1990, 1998, 2001) disagrees with the argument presented above and its relatives (Mirowski, 1990; Carrier, 1993). Dynamic complexity provides a foundation for fundamental uncertainty in Keynesian and PK models, and this applies to most of the various sub-branches of PKE besides Davidson’s “fundamentalist” or “Keynes-Post Keynesian”2 approach. The argument will be considered regarding three subdivisions of Post Keynesianism as identified by Hamouda and Harcourt (1988): the aforementioned fundamentalist Keynesianism, Sraffian (or neo-Ricardian), and Kaleckian (or Kaleckian- Robinsonian).3 Following King (2002, chap. 10), I admit to being more in sympathy with those he describes as “synthesizers” than with the more partisan sectarians of these approaches.4 I shall describe how each sub-branch has been analyzed using ideas of..