History of Economics eJournal最新文献

{"title":"On the Shocking Ignorance of Economists of G. Boole’s Logical Theory of Probability in His 1854 the Laws of Thought: Keynes’s Logical Theory of Probability in the 1921 a Treatise on Probability Is Built Entirely on Boole","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3510036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3510036","url":null,"abstract":"Keynes’s logical theory of probability was NOT the first explicit and detailed approach to logical probability. George Boole was the first academic to provide an explicit, systematic and detailed logical probability approach in history. Keynes’s own logical theory was built on both the work of Boole and the work of William E. Johnson. <br><br>This paper will deal with the fact that there are no economists in either the 20th or 21st centuries who have the slightest inkling about how Keynes built his logical theory of probability and who were the scholars whom Keynes built his approach to logical probability on. For instance, M Friedman thought that Keynes was a subjectivist. This is a common error made on the part of orthodox economists. <br><br>However, an even greater lacuna occurs among heterodox economists,who are completely ignorant of the role of Boole. <br><br><br>","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116376498","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":"European Economics and the Early Years of the 'International Seminar on Macroeconomics'","authors":"Aurélien Goutsmedt, Matthieu Renault, F. Sergi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3504731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3504731","url":null,"abstract":"L’International Seminar on Macroeconomics (ISoM) est une conference annuelle\u0000co-financee, pendant 15 ans (1978-1993), par l’EHESS et le NBER. Cet article expose les\u0000dynamiques institutionnelles et scientifiques sous-jacentes a cette cooperation. Nous\u0000suggerons que les macroeconomistes rassembles par l’ISoM contribuerent grandement a la constitution d’un reseau europeen d’economistes, partageant certains standards intellectuels et professionnels.\u0000Nous montrons que l’ISoM se situait au croisement de deux types d’« internationalisation » de l’economie : l’integration au niveau europeen des communautes de recherche\u0000nationales, ainsi qu’un processus d’« americanisation » de la discipline. Alors que la\u0000litterature existante sur l’« internationalisation » se concentre plutot sur le niveau national, notre article etudie ce processus a l’echelle europeenne. A cet egard, nous mettons\u0000en evidence le role cle joue par deux programmes de recherches en macroeconomie :\u0000la modelisation macroeconometrique a grande echelle et la theorie du desequilibre.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129722252","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":"Adam Smith, the Competitive Process, and the Flawed Consumer Welfare Standard","authors":"Warren S. Grimes","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3503702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3503702","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Scottish economist Adam Smith wrote in 1776 that the collective buying and selling of individuals would result in the preferred allocation of society’s resources. That insight has endured and is the basis for the competition law goal of fostering and protecting the competitive process. That goal, with venerable roots on both sides of the Atlantic, has been sidetracked by emergence of the consumer welfare standard, which is now preeminent in competition law analysis. The narrow focus of the consumer welfare standard has led to confusion and misdirected decisions that do not adequately protect the competitive process. I point to confusion about who is the buyer and who is the seller in many transactions, and describe why that classification should, in any event, be irrelevant in applying competition law. When competition is distorted, the central goal of protecting the process and ensuring a preferred allocation of resources is undermined, regardless of the impact on the consumer.\u0000 The proper welfare standard is unconcerned with where the harm occurs. The standard focuses on anticompetitive conduct at any level of the distribution chain and regardless of whether the anticompetitive effects are directed upstream at sellers or downstream at buyers. The symmetric standard is rooted in competition law decisions on both sides of the Atlantic; it is sound in theory and, compared to the consumer welfare standard, is easier to explain and apply. It more comfortably honors the broader goals of competition, including promoting entry, innovation, and choices for both entrepreneurs and consumers. I assess how this symmetric welfare standard would apply to mergers and classic predatory or exclusionary conduct. The standard offers hope of simplifying analysis and better serving ancillary goals of competition. Fostering and preserving efficiency, enhancing output, and maintaining low consumer prices are among the highly valued benefits of the competitive process, but they are not determinative. The focus must remain on the central goal of preserving the competitive process.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"90 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126421294","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":"Analele Liceului Vasile Conta Targu-Neamt, Seria Istorie, 1/2019 (The Annals of Vasile Conta High School, History Series)","authors":"Balan Emanuel","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3560089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3560089","url":null,"abstract":"<b>Romanian abstract:</b> Aceasta revista trateaza subiecte de istorie, istorie economica, arheologie, sociologie istorica, istorie literara si culturala.<br><br><b>English abstract:</b> This journal is about history studies, economics history, cultural history, archaeology, sociology, literature.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130076008","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":"Léon Walras, Irving Fisher and the Cowles Approach to General Equilibrium Analysis","authors":"R. Dimand","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3495943","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3495943","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the relationship of Walras’s work to a particularly influential tradition of general equilibrium, that associated with the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics in Colorado in the 1930s and at the University of Chicago from 1939 to 1955, and its successor, the Cowles Foundation, at Yale University from 1955. Irving Fisher introduced general equilibrium analysis into North America with his 1891 Yale dissertation Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices (published 1892) and was responsible in 1892 for the i¬ rst English translation of a monograph by Walras. Fisher was only able to obtain copies of books by Walras and Edgeworth when his thesis was almost ready for submission, discovering that he had independently reinvented a general equilibrium approach already developed by others, but went beyond Walras in constructing a hydraulic mechanism to simulate computation of general equilibrium and, before Pareto, in using indii¬€erence curves. Fisher was closely involved with Alfred Cowles in the Cowles Commission, the Econometric Society and Econometrica in the 1930s, promoting formal mathematical and statistical methods in economics, including drawing attention to the contributions of Walras, Edgeworth and Pareto. The i¬ rst substantial, systematic work on general equilibrium at the Cowles Commission was in international trade, by Theodore Yntema, research director of the Cowles Commission from 1939 to 1942 and author of A Mathematical Reformulation of the General Theory of International Trade (1932) and by Yntema’s student, Jacob Mosak, author of General Equilibrium Theory in International Trade (1944). A subsequent, much better-known body of work on existence of general equilibrium at Cowles was by Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu (initially independently but leading to a major joint publication) and by Lionel McKenzie, all three associated with the Cowles Commission in Chicago in the early 1950s. After Cowles moved to Yale, the focus of general equilibrium research at the Cowles Foundation was Herbert Scarf’s pioneering work on computable general equilibrium (which he linked to Fisher’s earlier attempt, i¬ rst presenting his approach in his contribution to Ten Economic Studies in the Tradition of Irving Fisher, 1967). Fisher and then the Cowles Commission were the channel through which Walrasian general equilibrium analysis entered North American economics. This paper is part of a larger history of the Cowles Commission and Foundation, commissioned by the Cowles Foundation. Presented at the 10th conference of the International Walras Association, University of Lausanne, 13-14 September 2019. I thank Amanar Akhabbar, Annie L. Cot, ClA©o Chaussonery-LaA¯gouche and Harro Maas for helpful comments at the conference, and Daniel Sarech for his presentation which drew my attention to the writings of Firmin OulA¨s.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"455 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123640528","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 Butcher and the Storyteller: Reflections on the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize Awarded to Paul Romer","authors":"Béatrice Cherrier, Aurélien W. Saïdi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3481159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3481159","url":null,"abstract":"This short paper offers some reflections on the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize awarded to Paul Romer. We describe the intellectual path that led him to embed endogenously-generated knowledge in growth models, a contribution that we believe was foremost a mathematical achievement. Accordingly, we examine Romer’s subsequent methodological statements on how mathematical is used and abused in theorizing. We locate his disagreement with other economists, in particular Robert Lucas, in their respective beliefs about the right degree of correspondence between real world objects, economic concepts and their mathematical representation. Romer endorses a much debated millennium-old vision of knowledge whereby the scientist needs to “carve the system at its joint” like a skilled “butcher.” Lucas rather conceives himself as a “story-teller” who build “artificial mechanisms” to highlight real-world phenomena.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116466420","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 Dialectical Reading of Adam Smith on Wealth and Happiness","authors":"Erik W. Matson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3266115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3266115","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this essay I consider the relationship between wealth and happiness in Adam Smith by a close reading of a famous section of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS IV.i.8-10). I interpret Smith as presenting an open-ended dialectic between the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of happiness with the goal of contributing to his readers’ moral education. Within the dialectic Smith places some important social analysis, which he uses to stimulate reflection and synthesis. Upon reflection and observation of the tensions within the passages and the larger scope of his works, Smith pushes the reader to confront a question: given the knowledge—knowledge that one acquires upon reading TMS IV.i.8-10—that (1) people tend to be deceived into thinking that pursuing and acquiring wealth will make them happy, and that (2) acting on their deception has beneficial unintended consequences, how should one proceed in one's own pursuit of wealth and happiness?","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116694961","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 Examination of the Very Severe Ignorance of Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability Among Heterodox Economists and Their Erroneous Beliefs About Logical and Subjective Probability","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3467399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3467399","url":null,"abstract":"Heterodox economists have simply skipped the two most important parts of Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability (1921), Part II and Part V. They basically assess Keynes’s position on probability and uncertainty based on a reading primarily of Chapter III of Part I of the A Treatise on Probability.<br><br>This results in their failure to grasp Keynes’s inexact measurement – approximation approach to probability in Part II and Keynes’s inexact measurement – approximation approach to statistics in Part V of the TP. Both Part II and V form the basic foundation of Keynes’s approach to logical probability that Keynes built on Boole. <br><br>Specifically, heterodox economists are ignorant of (i) Keynes’s inexact approach to measurement, based on Boolean approximation that uses lower and upper bounds, when dealing with probability and (ii) Keynes’s inexact approach to measurement ,based on Boolean approximation that uses lower and upper bounds, when dealing with statistics.<br><br>This results in a belief that Keynes’s method involved an application of ordinal probability only some of the time, because there was supposed to be entities, called non-comparable, non-measureable and incommensurable probabilities, that can’t be analyzed. Heterodox confusions about Keynes’s discussion on pp. 31-36 of the TP concerning unknown probabilities and indeterminate probabilities, where indeterminate probabilities are Boolean in nature and have nothing to do with unknown probabilities, leads heterodox economists into an intellectual quagmire of quicksand that could have been easily avoided if they had covered Parts II and V of A Treatise on Probability.<br><br>The extensive, but unique, Keynes–Townshend correspondence over the connections between the GT and TP in 1937-38 showed why Keynes’s method of inexact measurement and approximation for both probability and statistics is what links the GT and TP. On questions of probability and expectations, only the TP and the GT are mentioned by Keynes and Townshend in their correspondence. There is no mention of the 1937 QJE article or of fundamental uncertainty or of Frank Ramsey or subjective probability.<br><br>An examination of both Rosser and Skidelsky reveals that they both simply have no basic understanding about what a logical theory of probability is or what a subjective theory of probability is. Both Rosser and Skidelsky, like Muth before them, confuse the two approaches.<br><br>An examination of Rosser and Skidelsky illustrates the astounding ignorance of Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability on the part of heterodox economists. Neither Rosser or Skidelsky demonstrate that they have even the slightest understanding of what an interval valued probability is, what Keynes’s method was-inexact measurement and approximation, how uncertainty is related to non additivity, that Keynes was not a subjectivist, that Savage rejected the frequency approach to probability, and that subjective probability distributions can’t possibly conv","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117311834","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":"Keynes’s Method Has Nothing to Do With a Common Discourse or Ordinary Language Logic: Keynes’s Method, Which Involved the Use of Inexact Measurement in Probability and Statistics, Based on Approximation, Was Based Directly on Boole’s Mathematical Logic and Algebra","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3466532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3466532","url":null,"abstract":"It is impossible to correctly grasp Keynes’s method of analysis in the A Treatise on Probability in 1921 if the work of G Boole is ignored. Unfortunately, all Post Keynesian, Institutionalist and Heterodox economists , who have published work on Keynes in the 20th and 21st centuries, have done just that. George Boole, and not J M Keynes in his 1921 A Treatise on Probability, put forth the first technically advanced mathematical and logical treatment of a logical theory of probability in 1854 in his The Laws of Thought that was based on a logic of propositions about events or outcomes and not the events or outcomes themselves. This logic is a mathematical logic and has absolutely nothing to do with an ordinary discourse human logic, which involves the use of a common sense language between humans.<br><br>Given that Keynes built his A Treatise on Probability directly on the mathematical and logical approach and foundation of G Boole’s Boolean algebra and logic, it is simply impossible for Keynes’s approach in his A Treatise on Probability to have been based on a logic of ordinary language as claimed by Carabelli (1985, 1988, 2003), Chick (1998), and Chick and Dow (2001). Keynes is supposed to have had some kind of unique, unclear and peculiar approach to analysis based on intuition that can’t be discerned, according to Anna Carabelli (1985, 1988, 2003) and other heterodox economists.<br><br>Carabelli argues that Keynes was anti-logicist, anti-empiricist, anti-positivist, anti-rationalist, and anti-formalist in his method, as well as being anti-mathematical. It is quite impossible for Keynes to have opposed all of these positions and still write Parts II and V of the A Treatise on Probability, which provide formal, mathematical, and logicist underpinnings to his approach of Inexact measurement and Approximation that leads directly to Keynes’s specification of lower and upper bounds on all probabilities and outcomes except for areas of application involving his Principle of Indifference and relative frequencies that have passed an application of the Lexis-Q test (exploratory data analysis and /or goodness of fit tests).<br><br>Keynes’s inductive logic of Part III of the A Treatise on Probability is built directly on the method of inexact measurement and approximation of Part II of the A Treatise on Probability. This involves Keynes’s use of a modified version of Boole’s Problem X that he solved on pp.192-194 of the A Treatise on Probability and used on pp.234-237 and 254-257. Keynes’s development of the concept of finite probability, applicable to both numerical and non numerical probabilities, was a necessary prerequisite for understanding Keynes’s work in Part III on induction and analogy. Given Keynes’s work on the relationship between probability and induction in Part III of the A Treatise on Probability it is impossible for Keynes to have been a rationalist, as claimed by R.O.Donnell.<br><br>Keynes’s work in Part III of the A Treatise on Probabi","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132133239","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":"Jean-Baptiste Say on Free Trade","authors":"Guy Numa","doi":"10.1215/00182702-7803715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-7803715","url":null,"abstract":"Jean-Baptiste Say is generally portrayed as an unrelenting champion of laissez faire who believed commercial activity promoted economic well-being. However, I develop a more nuanced portrait of Say’s thinking by showing that he did not believe that free trade was an unmitigated good. He thus identified several exceptions to free international trade that justified government intervention in the form of restrictions on imports, and public subsidies to domestic industries. Going beyond Adam Smith’s arguments for protective tariffs, Say maintained that government could play a role to protect infant industries, insisting on the fact that protectionism could only be gradually and carefully removed. Drawing upon Say’s published writings and archival sources, I show that Say developed original views on domestic and international trade, several of which were distinct from those of Smith. Overall, Say’s analysis of free trade sheds greater light on his conception of the role of government in a market economy. It illustrates under what conditions the government should intervene in order to achieve both economic efficiency and social justice.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129207683","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}