While standard accounts of the 1930s debates surrounding economic thought pit John Maynard Keynes against Friedrich von Hayek in a clash of ideology, this reflexive dichotomy is in many respects superficial. It is the argument of this book that both Keynes and Hayek developed their respective theories of the business cycle within the tradition of Swedish economist Knut Wicksell, and that this shared genealogy manifested itself in significant theoretical affinities between the two supposed antagonists. The salient features of Wicksell's work, namely the importance of money, the role of...

The book uses archival data to examine how access to micro-finance credit played a role in facilitating adjustment to blight during the Great Famine of Ireland.
The author argues that the worst affected districts with a microfinance fund experienced substantially smaller population declines and larger increases in buffer livestock during the famine than those districts without a fund. The potentially limited capacity of credit access to mitigate the effects of a major environmental shock on the poorest, most vulnerable borrowers is also a key topic of discussion.