Milgate was educated at the University of Sydney and the University of Cambridge where he taught economics before moving to Harvard University in 1984. He returned to Cambridge in 1996. He is best known for his contributions to the dissemination of economic knowledge through his New Palgrave activities and his published writings that focus on exploring: (1) the relation between classical economic theory and Keynesian economics as an alternative to standard neoclassical thinking about the market mechanism; (2) the history of nineteenth-century political economy. An assessment of aspects of the first set of contributions can be found in Dutt and Amadeo's Keynes's Third Alternative.[3] In 1992 Milgate shared the Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing (from Columbia University Business School) for the New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance and in 1995 The New Palgrave World of Economics was named among the 100 most influential books since WW2 by the CEEPP at the University of Oxford.[4] In 2011 his After Adam Smith was awarded the David and Elaine Spitz Prize for the best book on liberal and democratic theory by the International Conference for the Study of Political Thought. He was a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley (1992) and was made distinguished visiting professor of economics at Osaka Gakuin University in Japan in 2008. He is a founding editor of the journal Contributions to Political Economy.
Selected bibliography
This is a list of some of Milgate's major works.[5]
Books
Milgate, Murray (1982). Capital and employment: a study of Keynes's economics. London New York: Academic Press. ISBN9780124962507.
Milgate, Murray; Eatwell, John (1983). Keynes's economics and the theory of value and distribution. London New York: Duckworth. ISBN9780715617496.
Milgate, Murray; Eatwell, John; Newman, Peter K. (1992). The new Palgrave dictionary of money & finance (3 volume set). London New York: Macmillan Press Stockton Press. ISBN9780333527221.
Milgate, Murray; Stimson, Shannon C. (2011). After Adam Smith: a century of transformation in politics and political economy. Princeton, New Jersey Woodstock: Princeton University Press. ISBN9780691152349.
Milgate, Murray; Eatwell, John (2011). The fall and rise of Keynesian economics. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN9780199777693.
Journal articles
Milgate, Murray; Eatwell, John (1988). "Economic theory and European society: the influence of J.M. Keynes". History of European Ideas. 9 (2): 215–225. doi:10.1016/0191-6599(88)90042-3.