Keynes, John Maynard

English economist celebrated for General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), which initiated the so-called Keynesian Revolution. He is also noted for his other writings, especially A Treatise on Money (1930), as well as his central role in the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 which created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

The gradual but increasingly widespread acceptance of most of Keynes's views in the immediate years after World War II raised Keynesianism for a while to the position of a prevailing orthodoxy. In recent years, however, Keynes's star has definitely begun to wane. Even so, Keynes remains one of the three or four most influential economists who ever lived.