Abstract
Anointed by Keynes to complete the index to The General Theory in 1935, David Bensusan-Butt made an early claim to academic fame. His subsequent career dabbling within the worlds of public policy and research was similar to that of his idol, Keynes. He made lasting contributions to taxation policy and at a higher level of abstraction, growth theory. As an aesthete, Bensusan-Butt embraced Keynes's skepticism of the Benthamite calculus. His lifetime preoccupation to recast the methodology of modern economics ended in failure.
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