John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, was an English economist whose writings are considered the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, as well as its various offshoots. Originally trained in mathematics, he built on and refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles; his ideas, further developed after his death as New Keynesianism, are seen as foundational to mainstream macroeconomics, and he has been called the father of macroeconomics and one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. Keynes was educated at King's College at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1904 with a degree in mathematics. During the Great Depression of the 1930s he spearheaded the Keynesian Revolution, challenging the ideas of neoclassical economics that held that free markets would, in the short to medium term, automatically provide full employment as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands.