History of Economics eJournal最新文献

{"title":"Emigration with a Pulled Handbrake: Friedrich A. Lutz’s Internal Methodenstreit","authors":"Lachezar Grudev","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3858831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3858831","url":null,"abstract":"My paper reconstructs the path of German economist Friedrich A. Lutz (1901–1975) to American<br>economics. The correspondence with his former teacher Walter Eucken, the founder of the Freiburg<br>School, constitutes a crucial and yet unexplored source for the paper. Through Lutz’s case, I<br>demonstrate the growing gulf between German and Anglo-Saxon economics during the late 1930s.<br>In his native Germany, Lutz was trained in methodologically and institutionally focused<br>economics, which differed fundamentally from the mathematical economics dominating Anglo-<br>Saxon academia. He realized that an academic career in the US would be impossible if he did not<br>adapt to the new methods and if he did not abandon the methods of the German tradition. This<br>gave rise to his internal Methodenstreit. After the emigration in 1938, he constantly experienced<br>doubts and tensions because he was convinced that without considering institutions, mathematical<br>economics was doomed to fail to explain the occurrence and essence of macroeconomic<br>phenomena. Despite his stellar career at Princeton, it was only after 1953 at Zurich, where he taught history and theory of socioeconomics for the rest of his life, that Lutz could reconcile this internal Methodenstreit.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132044656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An American Economist in a Developmental State: Marion Clawson and Israeli Agricultural Policy, 1953-1955","authors":"Daniel Schiffman, E. Goldstein","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3857747","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3857747","url":null,"abstract":"During 1953-1955, the American agricultural economist Marion Clawson advised the Government of Israel (GOI) as a member of the Economic Advisory Staff (EAS), a group of American economists invited by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Clawson, a protégé of John D. Black and Mordecai Ezekiel, was formerly Director of the US Bureau of Land Management (1948-1953). Clawson discovered that Israeli agriculture and irrigation were highly inefficient, and that planning almost completely ignored economic considerations. In 50 policy memoranda, he openly criticized Israel’s agricultural policy, and stated that Israel’s national goals—defense, full irrigation of the Negev desert, immigrant absorption via new agricultural settlements, and economic independence—were mutually contradictory. His major recommendations were: make Israel’s agricultural plan more realistic by reducing projected agricultural prices; end expensive Negev irrigation; increase irrigated farm size eightfold; freeze new settlements until the number of semi-developed settlements falls from 300 to 100; and limit new Negev settlements to 10 over 5-7 years. Minister of Finance Levi Eshkol and Minister of Agriculture Peretz Naphtali vehemently rejected Clawson’s recommendations, on the grounds that they were based on a pure economic perspective, with no consideration of Israel’s national goals. By September 1954, Clawson shifted to a more pragmatic approach: He toned down his criticism and sought common ground with the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA). Soon afterwards, he proposed to write a comprehensive report in collaboration with the MOA, which would be published as Israel Agriculture 1953/54 (IA). IA was a consensus document: It presented facts and asked questions, but did not prescribe policies. In IA, Clawson accepted that the GOI would likely prioritize noneconomic goals over economic efficiency. In proposing IA as a collaborative project, Clawson made a pragmatic decision to relinquish some independence for a chance to exert greater influence. We conclude that a. Clawson was only somewhat successful as an advisor, because his recommendations were considered seriously by the MOA but not by Eshkol (who trusted his own expertise); b. Although Clawson’s advice was highly insightful, in hindsight he was overly pessimistic regarding agricultural prices, and, most importantly, the Negev’s agricultural potential.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129224012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Frank Plumpton Ramsey: A Feminist Economist?","authors":"Soroush Marouzi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3854782","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3854782","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is an attempt to historicize Frank Plumpton Ramsey’s Apostle talks delivered from 1923 to 1925 within the social and political context of the time. In his talks, Ramsey discusses socialism, psychoanalysis, and British women’s movement. Ramsey’s views on these three intellectual movements of his time were inter-connected, and they all contributed to his take on the then policy debates on the role of women in economy. Drawing on some archival materials, biographical facts, and the historiographical literature of the post-war politics of motherhood, this paper shows that the kind of feminism that explains Ramsey’s remarks on women the best is the “new feminism” of the 1920s whose demands were not egalitarian in character.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130955440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"John Tomer’s Reconceptualization of the Concept of Human Capital","authors":"John B. Davis","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3847871","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3847871","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines John Tomer’s contributions to our understanding of the concept of human capital. Tomer criticized the standard mainstream view of the concept as narrowly focused on education and training and as seeing investments in human capital as having “an individual, cognitive, and machine-like nature.” A broader concept included attention to the people’s noncognitive development, and employed both social capital and personal capital concepts. This produces a more expansive view of human development, allows for a humanistic psychological perspective, and supports a multi-dimensional, Maslovian understanding of the hierarchy of human needs. Tomer framed his policy thinking regarding investments in human capital in terms of the goal of helping people become ‘smart’ persons. He recognized that a barrier to accomplishing this is high levels of economic inequality. The chapter thus goes on to discuss how socially stratified societies generate economic inequality in regard to human capital investments, and how thinking in terms of people’s capabilities can help us advance progressive economic and social policies agendas.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123236333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Using P. Samuelson’s 1952 Assessment of the Role of Mathematics in Economics To Evaluate Keynes’s Is-Lm Model in Part IV on Pp. 298–299 in Chapter 21 of the General Theory","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3767703","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3767703","url":null,"abstract":"P. Samuelson showed clearly in 1952 that a mathematical economics analysis using abstract symbols can be written out in clear English(or any other language) as well.<br><br>Samuelson’s assessment of the interchangeability of a correctly translated mathematical analysis into English was clearly accomplished by Keynes in the presentation of his IS-LM model in Part IV on pp.298-299 in Chapter 21 of the General Theory.<br><br>The only two possible conclusions that explain the total failure of macroeconomists since 1936, excluding D. Champernowne, Keynes’s best student, to understand Keynes’s IS-LM model as presented in Part IV on pp.298-299 in Chapter 21 of the General Theory is (a) that they are either very poor applied mathematicians or (b) they have been misled by the Pseudo Keynesians, identified by Terrence Hutchison as consisting of Joan Robinson, Austin Robinson, Richard Kahn, and Roy Harrod in a 1977 Hobart study.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"381 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132107722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"It Is Impossible to Understand Keynes’s Logical Theory of Probability without An Understanding of Part II of Keynes’s a Treatise on Probability: The McCann-Bateman Exchanges Over Ramsey’s Critique of Keynes of 1992","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3765888","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3765888","url":null,"abstract":"The crucial differences between Keynes’s and Ramsey’s theories of logical and subjective probability are insurmountable Keynes’s theory is based on propositions, imprecise, Inexact, interval valued probability (or decision weights that are non-additive), and deals with degrees of rational belief while Ramsey’s theory is based on actual events or outcomes, is precise and exact, additive, and deals with degrees of belief. The only overlap between the two theories occurs if, and only if, Keynes’s w, 0≤w≤1, which measures the completeness of the evidential weight of the Argument, V(a/h), equals 1 and probability preferences are linear. \u0000 \u0000L J Savage’s important restriction, ignored by most all economists ,that his subjective theory of probability can only be applied to Small worlds (micro and short run) and never to Large worlds (macro and long run), would be a compromise that Keynes would most likely have accepted, since the question of Keynesian weight measured by w, usually does not show up in short run, micro applications, but only in long run, macro and intertemporal applications. However, Ramsey never inserted any such restriction to his theory. The McCann-Bateman exchanges demonstrate that neither McCann nor Bateman understand the great, yawning abyss that separates the precise theory of Ramsey from the imprecise theory of Keynes. \u0000 \u0000There are no extant philosophers or economists, as of 2021, who understand this point, as well as why it was simply impossible for Keynes to have accepted Ramsey’s theory in any way, shape or form or to have ever been the slightest bit worried about the so called “points” Ramsey thought he was making against Keynes’s alleged “non numerical “ probabilities, which Part II of the A Treatise on Probability demonstrate are interval valued.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"107 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114053794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Critique of Modern Theories of Trade","authors":"Godwin Uddin","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3763875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3763875","url":null,"abstract":"This article recapitulates some of the trade theories reputed to be of the twentieth century. Here, the Heckscher-Ohlin theory (with some of its variants), endogenous growth theory, product cycle theory, and new trade theory were considered. This review thereof, amidst others, highlight some of the assumptions of these theories and thus present some critique of the same theories.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115640559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Astonishing Conclusion of the Attribution Debate on the Law of Comparative Advantage","authors":"Jorge Morales Meoqui","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3758474","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3758474","url":null,"abstract":"The recent demystification of David Ricardo’s famous numerical example in chapter 7 of the Principles bears important implications for the longstanding attribution debate on the law of comparative advantage. It has now become apparent that neither Ricardo nor Smith had anything to do with it. In reality, they both adhered to the classical rule for specialization, allegedly refuted by the law of comparative advantage. The unfounded belief in the existence of this so-called law gradually grew out of the confusion created by John Stuart Mill’s misreading of the purpose, content and implications of Ricardo’s four numbers. As shown in the paper, J. S. Mill, James Mill and Robert Torrens also always adhered to the classical rule for specialization. Thus, the law of comparative advantage is nothing more than an illusion, so no one should be credited for it.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"258 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116193109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"James M. Buchanan and the Public Choice Tradition","authors":"Art Carden, Audrey Redford, M. King, James Hanley","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3756493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3756493","url":null,"abstract":"In 1986, the economist James M. Buchanan (1919-2013) was honored with the Nobel Prize for the remarkable yet straightforward application of economic theory to political decisions. His was a constrained vision of imperfection and political motivation rather than an unconstrained vision of perfectible and malleable human nature. Buchanan was motivated by his observation that economists' assumptions in public finance and welfare economics did not correspond to the real world. Buchanan’s democratic populism permeates his scholarly work. For example, he criticized Arrow’s impossibility theorem. He argued that the potential for cycling in policy selection was not a defect of democracy but a strength. “(T)he opportunity for any social decision to be altered or reversed” limited the potential for a dominant group to lock in its preferences permanently. He was notable for insisting on unanimity—an agreement by the dispossessed and privileged—as the only way to legitimize the choice of a polity’s constitutional rules. His insistence on analyzing politics in terms of self-interest, limited information, and transactions rejects socio-political elites' pretensions. His overall body of work analyses how ordinary and imperfect people act politically. It asks how they might be able to design constitutions that constrain their worst tendencies.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"187 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132616317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Theory to the Rescue of Large-scale Models: Edmond Malinvaud’s View on the Search for Microfoundations","authors":"Matthieu Renault","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3434008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3434008","url":null,"abstract":"As a complement to Hoover (2012), this paper addresses the compatibility between the “General Equilibrium†(in particular, the disequilibrium theory†) and the “Aggregation†(i.e. large-scale models) microfoundational programs in the search for microfoundations in macroeconomics. For this purpose, Edmond Malinvaud is an interesting case, for he committed to both microfoundational programs and used to regard them as compatible. This paper brings such compatibility to the forefront through the analysis of Malinvaud's conception of macroeconomics, his alternative view on the search for microfoundations, and his research agenda in disequilibrium theory throughout the 1970s and the 1980s.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121148486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}