Between The Trade Cycle and the Galton Lecture : a reappraisal of the intellectual exchange between Harrod and Keynes in early 1937

This paper revisits a significant moment in the intellectualexchange between Roy Harrod and John Maynard Keynes: theearly months of 1937. Archival sources—including the involve-ment of Dennis Robertson—document their fertile discussion ofHarrod’s The Trade Cycle (1936) and Keynes’s Galton Lecture(1937). Textual evidence reveals converging reflections on tech-nical progress, demographic change, and the macroeconomic roleof public policy. Although the two works address distinct analyt-ical horizons, the paper shows a reciprocal intellectual influencebetween Harrod and Keynes, highlighting their shared effort toextend macroeconomic analysis beyond the short-run frameworkof The General Theory.