Donald Patinkin

Donald Patinkin was an Israeli economist who was born on January 8, 1922 in the city of Chicago. Patinkin spent most of his undergraduate career at the prestigious University of Chicago where he earned his Ph.D in economics. He was also enrolled at the Hebrew Theological College where he studied the Talmud. Patinkin is most widely recognized for his studies in Keynesian macroeconomics and for his tenure as president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem which lasted from 1982 until his resignation in 1986.

Patikin is classified as a neo-Keynesian economist and his famous book, “Money, Interest, and Prices,” is considered to be the book that John Maynard Keynes never wrote. He was also a contributor to the theory of disequilibrium economics, which developed ideas of traditional Keynesian ideas and compared them to a more classical approach of economics. He also did some work in theories of unemployment, and general monetary economics.

I was not aware of whom Donald Patinkin was and the impact he had on Keynesian economics prior to this assignment. It is interesting to learn about an individual who has accomplished so much in his field from my home town of Chicago, as well as a former lecturer at the University of Illinois. Although his research was cutting-edge, his work doesn’t seem to have much relevance to this class seeing as Patinkin’s work was mostly based on the macroeconomics, which focuses on the economy as a whole. In this class we are more concerned with interactions at a micro level because we are focused more specifically on organizational complexities and issues.