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Background, 1995-1997 It was while engaged on this contract, working from the publisher's galley proofs, that I first encountered Keynesian multiplier theory. My first reaction on reading this was one of concern on concluding that, in an effort to make the ideas as simple as possible for 1st-year students, the authors of the textbook had fallen into logical error. On checking more widely in textbooks by Samuelson, McTaggart and others, I was even more concerned to discover that they all said the same thing. So I then checked what Keynes had originally said in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) and was immediately struck by the circular logic leaping out of pages 113-115. My attempts to secure engagement with my arguments by academic economists were generally frustrating: a very common reaction was, "Hey, I'm a Microeconomist and that's Macroeconomics; you'll have to talk with a Macro expert." My plaintive retort that I was talking about ECON101 was to no avail. So I sought engagement by submitting an abstract for communication at the 1997 Conference of Economists in Hobart, Tasmania - the paper was received politely by a small audience, with no proper engagement with the arguments. I subsequently moved on to other pursuits, resolving to do some proper research in Economics one day, should the opportunity ever arise. Graduate Scholar again, 2001-2005 Although I communicated the fruits of this research at conferences and seminars, receiving warm support and encouraging feedback each time, I was unable to find any mainstream economics journal prepared to publish any of my three major papers. More seriously, no supervisor with the required expertise in Macroeconomics could be found. I imagine that my candidature established something of a record: the longest period of doctoral candidature, extending over five calendar years, without ever proceeding to 'confirmation of candidature', while supported for 3.5 years as a full-time graduate scholar. Eventually, late in 2005, a confirmation panel was put together with the kind cooperation of A/Prof Steve Keen acting as external supervisor. Unfortunately, though the volume and quality of my work was noted by the panel, confirmation was 'deferred' on the technicality that no internal supervisor had yet been found to certify that the work was worthy of examination. Attempts were made to transfer my candidature to the University of Western Sydney under A/Prof. Steve Keen but this proved to be impractical so I withdrew my candidature and returned to educational software development, scientific editing, and biomedical teaching and research. In Good Company, 2006-2009 On June 7, 2009 Steve posted on his blog: "In Debunking Economics, I argued that economic theory had done such damage to society that humanity would be better off if everything ever written about economics by anyone-including yours truly-were obliterated, and the world had to start again from scratch. Unfortunately that can't be done-everything, even economics, develops in an evolutionary way-but the next best thing is to admit how wrong neoclassical thought has been, and to start developing alternatives." In complete agreement with these sentiments, my contribution here is to dissect and expose in detail the errors in mainstream macroeconomic theories as I find them. This is what I have attempted to do in my analytical critiques of Keynesian Multiplier Theory and "Baumol's Disease". Keynesian update - July 2009
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