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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Mauro Boianovsky |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates Dennis Robertson's effort to defend the Cambridge utilitarian tradition against the so-called "new welfare economics" in the 1950s. Robertson's sustained and isolated endeavor to rescue Marshallian cardinal utility attracted the attention of economists at the time. According to Robertson, welfare economics should be based on cardinal utility, and the ordinalist revolution in the consumer and welfare theories should be rejected. It was only by sticking to the study of the economic or material aspects of welfare under the assumption of measurable utility that the economist would regain its ability to approach economic welfare as an objective of economic policy. |
| JEL: | B21 B31 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:010&r=hpe |
| By: | Roger Backhouse; Mauro Boianovsky |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates the rise and fall of the disequilibrium approach in macroeconomics between the mid 1960s and the late 1970s. During that period macroeconomists became attracted to the interpretation of unemployment phenomena based on the notion that markets are not in equilibrium. It was believed that such an approach could result in supply and demand functions distinct from those of conventional theory. However, by the late 1980s disequilibrium macroeconomics had largely disappeared from view, while approaches influenced by New Classical Macroeconomics and New Keynesian Economics became dominant. The present paper examines the contributions of the main authors - Patinkin, Clower, Leijonhufvud, Barro, Grossman, Solow, Stiglitz and Malinvaud - in order to offer a new pwerspective on the reasons for its sudden disappearance. |
| JEL: | B22 B31 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:012&r=hpe |
| By: | Gabriel Galípolo; Paulo Gala; Danilo Araújo Fernandes |
| Abstract: | The work of Douglass North represents today an important reference for those studying issues related to growth and institutional economics. After the book Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (1990) and the Nobel prize in 1993, his contributions seem to have been incorporated among economists, specially in the debate of growth and its determinants. There are still today some controversies regarding the nature of his contributions. Some would argue that his ideas are clearly from a neoclassical strand, while others would say that much of his work is affiliated with heterodox thinking. The objective of this paper is to contribute to this discussion. We argue here that one of the important influences in the work of Douglass North comes from Marx. North seems to use some of the Marxist concepts in his works of 1981 and 1990 in an inverted manner: he accepts Marxist categories but rejects materialism. North uses Marxist theory heuristically, taking advantage of its elements to build an alternative model to rational choice approaches. |
| JEL: | B31 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:013&r=hpe |
| By: | Rogério Arthmar |
| Abstract: | This paper contemplates the evolution of Pigou's stance towards the Keynesian Revolution. Preliminarily, a brief contrast between his and Keynes's approach to the problem of unemployment is made. After that, Pigou's first reactions to The General Theory are presented, along with the rejoinder from the Keynesian camp. In the sequence, the emergence of the "Pigou effect" in the context of the classical stationary state long run equilibrium is reconstituted, as well as the body of criticism to such mechanism formulated by many economists at that time. In the end, Pigou's last assessment of Keynes's contribution to economic theory is retrieved, comparing it to his initial impressions on the advance of Keynesianism in the academic world. |
| JEL: | B20 B22 B31 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:011&r=hpe |
| By: | Adriana Sbicca; André Luiz Fernandes |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses the use of Herbert Simon's concept of bounded rationality in the evolutionary firm of Nelson and Winter. The assumption of bounded rationality (an individual behavior) in a collective context of firm could require some justification. We suggest that the adoption of complex systems view of economics is the key to accommodate both ideas in the effort to construct the theoric foundations of the heterodox microeconomics. |
| JEL: | B41 B52 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:014&r=hpe |
| By: | Richard Day |
| Abstract: | The models used in economic theory, though necessarily abstract, should be consistent with the nature of decision making behavior. A formal metaphor of individual behavior as a continuous flow indicates certain requirements that theories of consumer, producer, and economywide behavior should exhibit. A family of discrete time, recursive optimizing models is suggested as the appropriate building block for further developing dynamic economic theory. |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esi:evopap:2005-14&r=hpe |
| By: | Fernando Ferrari Filho |
| Abstract: | This article shows, in a chronological time, how the Keynesian revolutionary conceptions and theoretical proposals were developed in the main Keynes`s works. |
| JEL: | B2 B22 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:015&r=hpe |
| By: | Angela Ganem |
| Abstract: | The main objective of this article is to recover, from a critical-philosophical point of view, the central importance of the rules to construct an explanation of the market social order in Adam Smith's and F.A. Hayek's perspectives. We start from a point of view that considers a unifying approach of Adam Smith's work giving to the moral rules the status of co-participative, side by side with the invisible hand, on the objective of viabilyzing the social order of the market. In Hayek's work we stress the smithian heritage regarding the market as spontaneous social order and we develop an argument affirming that the rules, although open space to construct a dialog with the heterodox approach, can be used as basis to his theory of self-development of the market, or the idea of the market as the only path to organize the contemporaneous society. |
| JEL: | B00 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:004&r=hpe |
| By: | Fernanda Cardoso; Gilberto Tadeu Lima |
| Abstract: | This paper is intended to underline the proximity between Keynes´s approach and the so-called complexity approach, which has been recently incorporated into economics. One of the central ideas of the complexity approach is that individual actions have unintended overall consequences as a result of a self-organization process, which in turn allows the functioning of the system. Keynes, in turn, played around with the idea of unintended consequences of individual actions, as his analysis of the paradox of parcimony testifies. However, it is argued that the complexity of the economy, from Keynes´s perspective, is firstly related to the complexity of human behavior. Besides, it is suggested that Keynes´s view of the economy as a complex organism was also born under the influence of the philosopher G. E. Moore. |
| JEL: | B19 B15 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:007&r=hpe |
| By: | David Dequech |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a broad concept of institutions and examines some theoretically relevant aspects of this and alternative concepts. The proposed concept is broad in two aspects: it includes a mental dimension not reduced to expectations, allowing institutional patterns of thought to include models of varying degrees of generality and precision; and it includes institutions that are norms of some kind as well as others that are not. Institutions may be social norms (legal or informal; moral or epistemic), decision- theoretic norms (a concept introduced to designate patterns that an individual should follow out of self-interest), or conventions without norm status. The proposed concept is able to underlie a theory that emphasizes the possibility of creative, unconventional behavior without implying that such behavior is irrational or necessarily subject to social sanctions. This is different from several concepts of institutions in institutional economics and in sociology. |
| JEL: | O30 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:174&r=hpe |
| By: | RŽmy Herrera (MATISSE) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to show how the neo-classical current, which has yet absorbed development as one of its components, is trapped in a deep crisis, and how its domination can be understood in the theoretical field tightly linked to that of neo-liberalism on the policies of development. |
| Keywords: | Development, neo-classical economics, neo-liberal policies, crisis, heterodoxies. |
| JEL: | A12 B24 B41 F20 N10 O11 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:wpsorb:r05075&r=hpe |
| By: | Masanao Aoki (Department of Economics, University of California) |
| Abstract: | This paper outlines the applications of one-and two-parameter Poisson-Dirichlet distributions to describe stationary statistical distributions of clus-ters of agents by types. We discuss how the notion of residudal allocation processes in statistics and population genetics literature also arises as stick-breaking processes in the physics literature. The phenomena of self-(non-) averaging in the physics literature are analogous to long-run non-vanishing of profits or variances of capital sizes in some disequilibrium economic dy-namics. We offer an economic interpretation of the physical notion of non-self-averaging as something that refers to the existence of long-run dise-quilibrium phenomena in economics, rather than thermodynamic limits in statistical physics, since both involve non-vanishing of variances as the size or the time goes to infinity. |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:fseres:2005cf388&r=hpe |
| By: | Jackson, Matthew O. |
| Abstract: | The science of social networks is a central field of sociological study, a major application of random graph theory, and an emerging area of study by economists, statistical physicists and computer scientists. While these literatures are (slowly) becoming aware of each other, and on occasion drawing from one another, they are still largely distinct in their methods, interests, and goals. Here, my aim is to provide some perspective on the research from these literatures, with a focus on the formal modeling of social networks and the two major types of models: those based on random graphs and those based on game theoretic reasoning. I highlight some of the strengths, weaknesses, and potential synergies between these two network modeling approaches. |
| Keywords: | networks, social networks, network games, network formation, game theory |
| Date: | 2005–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:clt:sswopa:1237&r=hpe |
| By: | Jonas de Oliveira Bertucci |
| Abstract: | According to the main ideas that one may extract from Marx's work on a transition theory, the socialism would be an intermediate stage for a superior system - the communism - made possible only after the complete development of the productive forces, capitalism's 'historical mission'. Nevertheless, this thesis represents one of Marx's biggest controversies, although his intense and huge analysis on the capitalism, which made possible important advances on the social practice and science. History has demonstrated that the reproduction and the expansion of the capitalism have not been limited by the advance of the technique and that, neither, a transition process would emerge from a sudden revolutionary reaction. In this work, we put on discussion some aspects of Marx's thought, his transition theory and the current process of crisis of the reproduction of the capitalist relations of production. The conclusions bring us to the thesis that the possibilities of reaching something that deserves to be called socialism depends directly on the development of relations of solidarity (very beyond the advance of the productive forces) and on the individual's political perception in front of the society - that starts to be demonstrated by a series of experiences of self-management with the heading of solidarity economics. |
| JEL: | B14 B24 P2 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:003&r=hpe |
| By: | Cláudio Roberto Amitrano |
| Abstract: | This paper tries to identify some points of touch between the Treatise on Money and the General Theory of Keynes, since a detailed analysis of some passages of the Treatise. |
| JEL: | B B3 B31 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:008&r=hpe |
| By: | André Luís C. de Lourenço |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes that, in spite of some fundamental invariant aspects, the way of exposition of the Minsky's work central concept - the so called Financial Instability Hypothesis - changed significantly throughout his academic productive period; furthermore it assesses the traditional way this concept is exposed does not incorporate important elements from the latest and more mature Minsky's contributions. The paper still states this canonical way to be insufficient to treat contemporary financial crisis phenomenon for lack of updating which incorporates recent institucional changes. |
| JEL: | B22 B59 B31 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:009&r=hpe |
| By: | Attila Ambrus (Littauer Center Harvard University) |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed005:905&r=hpe |
| By: | William Barnett (Department of Economics, The University of Kansas) |
| Abstract: | The following highly-cited research monograph, although widely available in libraries, is now out of print: William A. Barnett, Consumer Demand and Labor Supply, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1981. In case you do not have access to the printed book, I have scanned it and put it online below. Since scanners are not perfect at scanning mathematics, you should prefer the printed book, if you can borrow it from a library. Otherwise, you are free to read any of its chapters online. The chapters in this Table of Contents are hyperlinked to the online chapters. |
| Keywords: | consumer demand, labor supply, systemwide models, systems of equations, aggregation theory, index number theory, Divisia, household production, simultaneous estimation |
| JEL: | J J22 E41 C30 C32 C43 C50 D10 D12 D13 E10 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kan:wpaper:200521&r=hpe |
| By: | Cláudio Gontijo |
| Abstract: | This article presents a critique of the solution of the Temporal Single System Marxism (TSS) for the problem of transforming values into prices, which establishes that values and prices are simultaneously determined in a sucession of periods of production and circulation; the value transferred by constant and variable capital are not equal to the value of the goods they purchase but to the value of the money used to purchase these goods; and money represents a definite number of labor hour. It shows that the TSS does not go beyond Samuelson-Steedman's criticism, according to which values and prices are separately determined. In their attempt to salve "Marx's lemma", the defenders of this approach re-read Mar's Capital, discharging the long run equilibrium method, adopting an ideal concept of money in the place of commodity-money, abandoning the axiom that value is not generated in circulation and breaking with the structural logic of Capital. Despite criticizing the traditional usage of simultaneous equations to deal with the transformation question, they end up generating simultaneous equation that converge towards the tradicional long-run equilibrium positions. |
| JEL: | B51 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:002&r=hpe |
| By: | João Rogério Sanson |
| Abstract: | In contrast with the production of goods and services by firms, where the production costs are minimized under appropriate behavioral assumptions, consumer- producers have as objective the maximization of consumption expenditure, i.e., production costs of their outputs. According to Kenneth Boulding, were the impact upon the limited resources available on planet Earth taken into account, consumption expenditure should be something to be minimized. Thus, either we abandon consumer theory, as we know it, or we keep it as a reasonable description of reality. Then we should evaluate the long run consequences of such behavior in a larger context, which, as the consequence of larger population with increasing per capita consumption, comprises the overburdening of natural resources. When we decompose the time horizon of cultural evolution into shorter periods of adjustment, we may distinguish several types of institutional determination of how societies take decisions, as a group and individually. The postulate of maximizing consumption is reasonable for an aggregate approach. It simply reflects the predominant ethical values, of which ideologies, political platforms, and demand patterns are shorter run adjustments. |
| JEL: | Q50 D13 D72 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:136&r=hpe |
| By: | Jean-Jacques Friboulet (Chaire d'Histoire et de Politique Economiques) |
| Date: | 2004–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fri:fribow:382&r=hpe |
| By: | Bruce A. Weinberg; David W. Galenson |
| Abstract: | This paper studies life cycle creativity among Nobel laureate economists using citation data. We identify two distinct life cycles of scholarly creativity. Experimental innovators work inductively, accumulating knowledge from experience. Conceptual innovators work deductively, applying abstract principles. We find that conceptual innovators do their most important work earlier in their careers than experimental laureates. For instance, 75% of the most extreme conceptual laureates published their single best work in the first 10 years of their career, while none of the experimental laureates did. Thus while experience benefits experimental innovators, newness to a field benefits conceptual innovators. |
| JEL: | J24 O30 B31 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11799&r=hpe |
| By: | Farley Grubb |
| Abstract: | The purported failure of the classical quantity theory of money in the colonial economy is shown to be a failure of data and not a failure of theory. When new data on the quantity of specie in circulation is added to the current data on paper money and prices, and econometrically estimated in both short- and long-run monetary models, the long-debated anomaly regarding the performance of the classical quantity theory of money in the colonial economy disappears. How paper money was backed and could be exchanged for specie was important, but not in the way theorists assert. |
| JEL: | N11 E42 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11784&r=hpe |
| By: | Pascal Fessard (Chaire d'Histoire et de Politique Economiques) |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fri:fribow:389&r=hpe |
| By: | Juan Carlos Cordoba (Rice University); Genevieve Verdier (Texas A&M) |
| Abstract: | Lucas (2004) asserts that 'Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion, the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution...The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is nothing [Italics in the original] compared to the apparently limitless potential of increasing production.' In this article we evaluate this claim using an extended version of Lucas' (1987) welfare evaluation framework. We construct a social welfare function following Lucas' (2004) own suggestion of weighing everyone's welfare equally, and compute welfare measures in the same way as Lucas (1987). The result is surprising and robust. The potential welfare gains of redistribution are substantial and likely exceed the welfare gains of economic growth. Moreover, our calculations suggest that US inequality is above its optimal level. |
| Keywords: | Welfare costs, business cycles, economic growth, inequality |
| JEL: | E1 E2 D3 |
| Date: | 2005–11–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpma:0511021&r=hpe |