Report on Joint AEA-HES Sessions at The Annual Allied Social Science Meeting, Washington, D.C. December 27-30, 1981

The first of the three papers was by Samuel Hollander (University of Toronto) "On the Substantive Identity of the Ricardian and Neo-classical Conceptions of Economic Organization: The French Connection in British Classicism." Hollander contended that "Ricardian economics the economics of Ricardo and J. S. Mill in fact comprises in its essentials an exchange system fully consistent with the marginalist elaborations. In particular, their cost-price analysis is preeminently an analysis of the allocation of scarce resources, proceeding in terms of general equilibrium, with allowance for final demand, and the interdependence of factor and commodity markets." He emphasized that Ricardo approved Say's view of economic organization, to which Walras also adhered, and that for the long run Walras "subscribed to a cost-price analysis of the classical order." The writer of this report served as discussant and, while agreeing that there was no logical inconsistency between classical and neoclassical approaches, emphasized the danger of giving excessive credit to the rather fragmentary foreshadowings of the latter in the former, and the general problem of evaluating "obiter dicta."