Wynne Godley died yesterday. Students of mine will know how influenced I am by his work, especially with his co-author Marc Lavoie. Wynne had an interesting life. Born into the nobility, Wynne was a professional oboist before becoming an academic economist, rising to full Professor at Cambridge before his retirement. Wynne had a masterly style with macroeconomic modeling. He saw through the production function approach, and, with Cripps, in 1982, began to formulate a coherent stock-flow consistent macroeconomic alternative to understanding economic pathology. This work reached its apogee in the 2007 Monetary Economics: An Integrated Approach to Credit, Money, and Income, Production, and Wealth. This book sets out a new type of modeling paradigm in economics. It took Wynne a decade, working with Marc Lavoie, to get the thing right. A great review of the book, pointing out its flaws as well as praising it, is Lance Taylor's 2008 CJE article. Marc Lavoie has a powerpoint overview of Wynne's contributions here.
I never met Wynne, but we corresponded on the phone, and by email. He was generous, patient, and genial, and honestly interested in helping me with my first fumbling attempts at this type of modeling, which, if you've ever tried to build a model yourself, ain't easy. Stock flow consistent modeling requires precision, and computational ability, but also a sense of where the model should be going in the first place. That's not something you get overnight. Wynne had that sense in spades, and he was more than willing to share it.
Update. The FT has an obituary here.
This is a sad day. Like you, I am also a fan of his work. Doesn't surprise me that he was patient with you. His work shows his patience - "loving detail" as Lance Taylor puts it. Keynes said that economists can have a much greater impact than what people think and what we are going through is a proof of that - in a negative way. The radical work of Wynne Godley will someday gain worldwide acceptance - I am sure of that. This is a sad day for mankind. The person who figured out how the economic world works as an "organic whole" left us.
Hi Ramanan,
One of the best things about Wynne's approach is that, by reading all of those equations, and working with Gennaro's Eviews macros, you can read yourself into the area. Their Monetary Economics book is the start of something special, imho. Thanks again for your comment!