Time & Perspective Quote by James Tobin

A certain kind of modesty only economists can pull off: Tobin frames a career-defining agenda as if he were simply doing some overdue housekeeping. But the sentence is a manifesto. “More rigorous foundations” signals a mid-century anxiety that Keynesianism, for all its policy swagger after the Depression and WWII, could be dismissed as ad hoc: persuasive in crises, slippery in proofs. Tobin is staking out the project of making Keynes respectable in the language the profession increasingly demanded - formal logic, clear micro-level underpinnings, models you can’t wave away with a sneer about “storytelling.”

The verbs do the work. “Tighten” suggests discipline and constraint, a refusal of the roomy, rhetorical Keynes that politicians loved. “Elaborate” implies expansion without losing control: build a system large enough to handle unemployment, money, and uncertainty, but precise enough to survive internal critique. He’s not announcing a revolution so much as a consolidation - turning a set of powerful intuitions into a durable research program.

The context is the postwar turn toward mathematization and the sharpening battle lines between Keynesians and emerging monetarists. Monetary theory, in particular, had become a legitimacy test: if you couldn’t integrate money cleanly, your macro looked like handwaving. Tobin’s subtext is defensive and ambitious at once: Keynesian policy can’t remain a blunt instrument; it needs a refined theory spine to keep governing in a world where “rigor” is the price of admission.