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Richard Parker

Richard Parker is the author of John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics. He teaches at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Recent Articles

A General Theory of Keynes

Richard ParkerApr 17, 2002

John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom, 1937-1946


By Robert Skidelsky, Viking, 580 pages, $34.95.

John Maynard Keynes was an economist, a policy
adviser to
the British government (and, at times, a coruscating critic), an influential
figure
in the Liberal Party, an intimate member of the Bloomsbury Group, a prolific
journalist of opinion, a patron of the arts, a gentleman farmer, a wealthy
investor, a prominent business executive, a fixture of Cambridge University's
intellectual life, and a homosexual who, in his early forties, married a Russian
ballerina and lived thereafter (by all accounts) a deeply fulfilling life with
her.

Progressive Politics and, uh, ...God

Richard ParkerDec 19, 2001

When I tell politically progressive friends that I've started teaching a course at Harvard about religion's impact on American politics and public policy, I usually face one of two responses.



The first is an awkward silence--and a quick change of subject. The second is also awkward but comes with an anxiously knowing, usually sotto voce, "So you're doing abortion and the Christian right--that sort of thing, yes?" When I explain that, no, in fact I'm devoting only a week of the course to the religious right and that I barely mention abortion, it's usually back to awkward silence again--and the search for a new subject.

Screening a La Carte

Instead of a single TV rating system, why not let the PTA and the Christian Coalition -- and anyone else -- create their own?

Richard ParkerDec 19, 2001

In a culture that is seen to be spinning out of control, the V-chip has
generated an extraordinary alliance across conventional class and political
lines, from the Christian right to progressive media reformers, and in Congress,
from conservative Senator John McCain to liberal Congressman Ed Markey.
According to a New York Times poll from last February, more than 80
percent of parents say they consider the V-chip (or something like it) an
indispensable part of their families' information age future.

Can Economists Save Economics?

Richard ParkerDec 19, 2001

Economics is what economists do.
--Jacob Viner

The trouble with Professor Viner's delicate evasion is that economists no longer agree about what they do, or even whether it is all worth doing. Critics outside the profession long faulted economists for a host of sins: their deductive method, their formalism, their over-reliance on arcane algebra, their imperviousness to complex evidence, the bald inconsistency of different facets of the economic paradigm. What's new--after decades of steadfast resistance--is that these same concerns have begun to bother the profession too.

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