<P> Following the global financial crisis of 2007--08, there was a worldwide resurgence of interest in Keynesian economics among prominent economists and policy makers . This included discussions and implementation of economic policies in accordance with the recommendations made by John Maynard Keynes in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s--most especially fiscal stimulus and expansionary monetary policy . </P> <P> From the end of the Great Depression until the early 1970s, Keynesian economics provided the main inspiration for economic policy makers in Western industrialized countries . The influence of Keynes's theories waned in the 1970s, due to stagflation and critiques from Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Robert Lucas, Jr. and other economists, who were less optimistic about the ability of interventionist government policy to positively regulate the economy or otherwise opposed to Keynesian policies . From the early 1980s to 2008, the normative consensus among economists was that attempts at fiscal stimulus would be ineffective even in a recession, and such policies were only occasionally employed by the governments of developed countries . </P>

Who was the economics professor who brought the keynesian ideas across the atlantic to the us