James Kenneth Galbraith (born January 29, 1952) is an American economist. He is a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and at the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin.

He is also a Senior Scholar with the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and part of the executive committee of the World Economics Association, created in 2011.

Background

Galbraith is a son of the renowned Canadian-American economist John Kenneth Galbraith and Catherine Galbraith (née Catherine Merriam Atwater), and is the brother of the former diplomat, commentator and 2016 Vermont gubernatorial candidate Peter W. Galbraith. He earned his B.A., magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1974 and Ph.D. from Yale University in 1981, both in economics. From 1974 to 1975, Galbraith studied as a Marshall Scholar at King's College, Cambridge.[1]

Career

From 1981 to 1982, Galbraith served on the staff of the Congress of the United States, eventually as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee.[1] In 1985, he was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution.[1]

Galbraith is a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and at the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin. Galbraith heads up the University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP), which has been described by economic historian Lord Skidelsky as "pioneering inequality measurement".[2] UTIP promotes the Theil index over the Gini coefficient as a measurement for comparing inequality between groups, regions and countries.[2]

In March 2008, Galbraith used the 25th Annual Milton Friedman Distinguished Lecture to launch a sweeping attack on the Washington Consensus on free market policies, especially the monetarist version.[3] He argued strongly that Keynesian economics offered a solution to the 2008 financial crisis, whereas monetarist policies would deepen the recession. Towards the end of 2008 and into 2009, many policymakers around the world increased government spending and/or cut taxes, arguably in line with Galbraith's views, as part of the Keynesian resurgence described by the Financial Times as "a stunning reversal of the orthodoxy of the past several decades".[4]

In 2010, Galbraith edited an edition of his father's works for the Library of America series.[5] He was interviewed for the 2021 JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass documentary.[6]

Writings

Galbraith's books include Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the American Future, 1989; Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay, 1998; Inequality and Industrial Change: A Global View, 2001, co-edited with Maureen Berner; and The Predator State, 2008. He is the author of two textbooks – The Economic Problem (with Robert L. Heilbroner) and Macroeconomics (with William Darity Jr.) He also contributes a column to The Texas Observer and writes regularly for The Nation, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and The Progressive. His op-ed pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Boston Globe and other newspapers. Galbraith argues that modern America has fallen prey to a wealthy, government-controlling "predatory class". He said:

Humanitarian initiatives

Galbraith is the chairman of Economists for Peace and Security, formerly known as Economists Against the Arms Race and later Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (ECAAR), an international association of professional economists concerned with peace and security issues. In 2009, he joined the project Soldiers of Peace, a documentary for global peace and against all wars, which has won various awards in film festivals.[10][11]

Books

  • Galbraith, James Kenneth; Chen, Jing (2025), Entropy Economics: The Living Basis of Value and Production, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 9780226837840.
  • Galbraith, James Kenneth (2016), Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice: The Destruction of Greece and the Future of Europe, Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0300-22044-5.
  • Galbraith, James Kenneth (2014), The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-1-4516-4492-0.
  • Galbraith, James Kenneth (2012), Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-985565-0.
  • Galbraith, John Kenneth (2010), Galbraith, James K (ed.), The Affluent Society and Other Writings 1952–1967, New York: The Library of America, ISBN 978-1-59853-077-3.
  • Galbraith, James Kenneth (2008), The Predator State.
  • Galbraith, James Kenneth; Berner, Maureen, eds. (2001), Inequality and Industrial Change: A Global View, Cambridge University Press
  • Galbraith, James Kenneth (1998), Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay
  • Galbraith, James Kenneth; Darity, William Jr. (1993), Macroeconomics, Houghton Mifflin College Div, ISBN 978-0395522417.
  • Galbraith, James Kenneth; Heilbroner, Robert L (1989), The Economic Problem, Pearson College Div, ISBN 978-0132251945.
  • Galbraith, James Kenneth (1989), Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the American Future.

References

  1. 1 2 3 James K. Galbraith (home page), U Texas, archived from the original on March 10, 2010, retrieved March 1, 2010.
  2. 1 2 Skidelsky, Robert (2009). Keynes: The return of the Master. Allen Lane. pp. 124, 125. ISBN 978-1-84614-258-1.
  3. ↑ Galbraith, James K. "The Collapse of Monetarism and the Irrelevance of the New Monetary Consensus" (PDF). The University of Texas. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 17, 2009. Retrieved February 28, 2009.
  4. ↑ Giles, Chris; Atkins, Ralph; Guha, Krishna. "The undeniable shift to Keynes". London, Frankfurt, Washington: The Financial Times. Retrieved January 23, 2008.
  5. ↑ Galbraith, John Kenneth (2010), Galbraith, James K (ed.), The Affluent Society and Other Writings 1952–1967, New York: The Library of America, ISBN 978-1-59853-077-3
  6. ↑ Creighton, Adam (January 6, 2023). "60 years on, JFK's murder shrouded in mystery". The Australian.
  7. ↑ Galbraith, James K (June 2006). "Predator State". Mother Jones. Retrieved May 6, 2009.
  8. ↑ Galbraith, James K. (November 6, 2002). "The Unbearable Costs of Empire". The American Prospect. Retrieved June 8, 2024.
  9. ↑ "How the Economists got it wrong". Prospect. November 30, 2002. Archived from the original on August 10, 2011. Retrieved May 6, 2009.
  10. ↑ "James K. Galbraith". The Cast. Soldiers of Peace. Archived from the original on August 8, 2009. Retrieved October 18, 2009.
  11. ↑ "Soldati di Pace" [Soldiers of Peace]. Blogspot (in Italian). Google. October 18, 2009. Archived from the original on January 18, 2019. Retrieved October 18, 2009.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Galbraith