As the global economic crisis continues to cause damage, some policy makers have called for a more Keynesian approach to current economic problems. In this book, the economists Peter Temin and David Vines provide an accessible introduction to Keynesian ideas that connects Keynes's insights to today's global economy and offers readers a way to understand current policy debates.

John Maynard Keynes (1883--1946) created the branch of economics now known as macroeconomics. He played a major role in the reconstruction of Europe and the world economy after the Second World War. Keynesian economics came to be identified with efforts to mitigate the Great Depression and with postwar economic policies that helped power a golden age of economic growth. Temin and Vines argue that Keynes also provided a way to understand the interactions among nations, and therein lies his relevance for today's global crisis.

Temin and Vines survey economic thinking before Keynes and explain how difficult it was for Keynes to escape from conventional wisdom. They set out the Keynesian analysis of a closed economy and expand the analysis to the international economy, using a few simple graphs to present Keynes's formal analyses in an accessible way. They discuss problems of today's world economy, showcasing the usefulness of a simple Keynesian approach to current economic policy choices. Keynesian ideas, they argue, can lay the basis for a return to economic growth.