[2] Although he became a university lecturer in the Cambridge faculty of economics and politics in 1951, it was not until five years later that he agreed to join the fellowship of a college, choosing that of Peterhouse.
Christopher Calladine thinks that this unusual situation may have been because Goodwin initially had ideological opposition to the notion of the college system, which he may have considered to be anachronistic.
[4] Goodwin described himself as "a lifelong but wayward Marxist",[5] joining the Communist Party of Great Britain while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in the 1930s and then its American counterpart when he got back to the United States.
Following an early suggestion of Le Corbeiller's, Goodwin characterized the business cycle as a non-linear self-oscillation.
In his model, employed workers have the role of predators as their wage demands squeeze profits and hence investment, causing a subsequent increase in unemployment.