Possibly no book in economic theory has a more presumptuous first chapter than Keynes’s General Theory. To be sure, other economists had proclaimed their own originality and brilliance, but Keynes did it with such force that it seemed convincing. This lack of modesty apparently went back to Keynes’s youth. When he took the civil service exam upon graduation from college and did not receive the top score in economics, his response was, “I evidently knew more about economics than my examiners.”