Nicholas Kaldor and the Real World

First Published in 1994. Nicholas Kaldor was born in Hungary in 1908 and died as Baron Kaldor of Newnham in the City of Cambridge, England, in 1986. The years between revealed no hint of scandal or psychological problems that might make Kaldor the subject of a novel. His life was, instead, a straight line of growth and achievement, of intellectual enjoyment and strong values. Kaldor's struggles were intellectual-namely, his efforts to comprehend the economics of the real world, to fit this understanding into economic theory, and to convince his fellow citizens and economists of the accuracy of his perceptions. Kaldor forces us to ponder what the relationship between economic theory and practice should be.