My reaction to “creative capitalism” as lauded by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Kinsley, and (somewhat to my surprise), Professor Glaeser of th… - Richard Posner

The importance to economics of the study of institutions is no longer a controversial proposition, thanks in part to the scholarly literature generated by the new institutional economics movement. Institutions are more than organizations – property is an institution, but not an organization – but organizations are an important form of institution and will be the focus of my paper, as it is, to a considerable extent, of the new institutional economics.

Although there are other heresies in The General Theory, along with puzzles, opacities, loose ends, confusions, errors, exaggerations, and anachronisms galore, they do not detract from the book's relevance to our present troubles. Economists may have forgotten The General Theory and moved on, but economics has not outgrown it, or the informal mode of argument that it exemplifies, which can illuminate nooks and crannies that are closed to mathematics. Keynes's masterpiece is many things, but "outdated" it is not.

I wish in closing to emphasize how little corporate philanthrophy (the practical meaning of “creative capitalism,” a terrible expression that implies nonaltruistic capitalism is uncreative) is actually philanthropic, in the sense of being driven by altruism rather than by profit maximization.