Simon Kuipers: An Economist in Search of Rigour and Relevance

At the end of 1997 and after twenty-five years of duty, Professor Simon Kuipers retired as managing editor of De Economist. As a token of indebtedness and gratitude, this article reviews Kuipers' written work. The article focuses on two topics that dominate Kuipers' endeavours. First, his contributions to macroeconomic theory, with particular emphasis on his (neo-)Keynesian approach are examined. Second, Kuipers' contributions to actual monetary and economic policy are discussed, emphasis being placed on his empirical work.     

W. Artur Lewis Lecture: The Lewis model of “economic growth with unlimited supplies of labor”

The National Economic Association introduced the W. Arthur Lewis Distinguished Lecture series in December 1985. The Lewis Lecture is named in honor of the 1979 Nobel Laureate in Economics, much of whose research has been devoted to the problem of Third World economic development. A native of St. Lucia, in the former British West Indies, Arthur Lewis has risen to fame as the preeminent development economist of his generation. He is most famous for his 1954Manchester School paper on economic development with unlimited supplies of labor, but his contributions span the fields of industrial organization, public finance, and international trade. He was one of the first to explore in depth the evidence on movements on terms of trade between industrialized and developing countries and was the first to perform a regression analysis in empirical trade research. Lewis was an active advisor to various governments in West Africa, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia during the development decades. He says that he conceived of the idea of unlimited supplies of labor while on mission in Bangkok, Thailand in 1952. This third lecture in the series, by Professor Charles Kindleberger, examines the broad applicability of the Lewis model.     

On Professor Takashi Negishi's contributions to economic theory

Professor Takashi Negishi has made fundamental contributions to economic theory on an extremely broad range of topics. As the editors of this special issue, we feel extremely fortunate that each of us has worked on topics with respect to which Professor Negishi's influences have been particularly large. In this introductory article, each of us will discuss Professor Negishi's influence on the topic we are most familiar with. For the entire spectrum of his research, readers are referred to the list of Professor Negishi's publications presented at the end of this article.     

Octogenarian John Kenneth Galbraith: Sunday scientist or superstar?

Summary In mid-October of last year John Kenneth Galbraith, world-famous American economist of Canadian descent and for many years Professor of Economics at Harvard University, celebrated his eightieth birthday. This paper features some of the brainchilds that made his name, for the most part laid down in popularly and very well-written best-selling books, of whichThe Affluent Society, published more than thirty years ago, has been the most influential; it comprises ideas that may regain topicality. Galbraith, who has been politically active on the left wing of the Democratic Party, is a follower of Thorstein Veblen, founding father of the typically American movement called institutionalism. He cannot pride himself upon the unqualified admiration and sympathy of his fellow-economists, whom he has often rebuffed. In spite of inadequacies in his reasoning he has enriched economic literature with some original contributions. He is still going strong and wielding his often acerbic pen.Retired economic journalist.The author thanks Professors A. Heertje and P. Hennipman for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Income distribution: Second thoughts

Summary As a follow-up of his book on income distribution the author reformulates his version on the scarcity theory of income from productive contributions. The need to introduce into an earnings theory several job characteristics, non-cognitive as well as cognitive, and the corresponding personality traits is stressed, the latter subdivided into innate and learnable capabilities. The theory is presented in two alternative mathematical versions: one where job and person characteristics are continuous and one where they have discrete values and their frequencies assume continuous values. Although, mainly in the United States, numerous empirical inquiries have been made, job characteristics and the corresponding personal characteristics have not been included in sufficient number.I want to express my profound gratitude to Professor Robert H. Haveman, who not only published a deep-delving review article on my book Income Distribution: Analysis and Policies but also commented on an earlier text of the present article. I also owe a great debt to Professor Jan Pen who in a long series of discussions challenged a number of my concepts and figures. Finally I want to thank Dr. S. K. Kuipers for helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

Central banking with the benefit of hindsight

Summary From his experience as a central banker during more than 14 years, the author gives some thoughts to three problems, viz. the exchange rates system, international reserves and monetary policy in theory and practice. As to the exchange rate system the relative merits of fixed parities and fluctuating rates are discussed on the basis of the experiences after August 1971. In the section on international reserves, attention is paid to the role of gold with the advice to introduce a form of flexible management of the gold price by the main gold-holding central banks. In the last section the monetary elements of what is called monetarism are shown with a certain accent on techniques of monetary policy. Address by Dr. J. Zijlstra, President of the Netherlands Bank, for the Per Jacobsson Foundation in Washington on Sunday, September 27, 1981, reprinted here through the courtesy of the Board of the Per Jacobsson Foundation     

Recollections of My Career

Editorial Note:Professor Sumitro Djojohadilcusomo is one of the principal architects of Indonesia's post-independence economic policy. He has held key economic portfolios in both the immediate post-independence era and in the New Order. In addition, as Professor of Economics at the University of Indonesia, and as a tireless lecturer and writer on economic issues, he has been instrumental in shaping the education of several generations of economics students in Indonesia, many of whom are now in key government positions. At the end of August, Professor Sumitro generously agreed to be interviewed on his long career by two members of the BIES editorial board, Anne Booth and Thee Kian Wie. In preparing this interview for publication, the editors have tried to preserve Professor Sumilro's own words to the greatest extent possible; his lucid and entertaining remarks are thus reproduced with a minimum of editing. The interview began with a question to Professor Sumitro about his early training in economies.     

Hennipman on economic policy and welfare economics

Summary In the article attention is paid to a volume of reprints, in which Professor Hennipman unravels many problems on the boundary lines of economic policy, welfare economics and the theory of public finance. This appears to be one of the few subjects in economics where deductive and qualitative reasoning can still do the job alone, because the aim is refinement of thinking. The sharpening of mind on these issues can be helpful in finding the way in which economic theory can be useful to economic policy.P. Hennipman,Welvaartstheorie en economische politiek, edited by J. van den Doel and A. Heertje, Samsom Uitgeverij, Alphen aan den Rijn/Brussel, 1978.     

Professor Ronald W. Jones and his influence on Asia Pacific economics

Professor Ronald W. Jones is one of the greatest general equilibrium theorists, who has illustrated the economic force underlying a general equilibrium adjustment in a very elegant manner. With his friendly personality, at the same time, he has made an enormous contribution to Asian Pacific economic research and the formation of a strong network of economists in our region. This essay intends to explain what I think of as the essence of his economics and his contributions to Asia Pacific economics.     

A finnish textbook in economic history

Abstract

There is, to my knowledge, no work exactly corresponding to Professor Jutikkala's in any of the major languages. Uudenajan taloushistoria is a comprehensive and very skilful exposition of the economic development of the modern world and certainly much more than simply a good textbook in which material from generally recognized standard works, partial surveys, and particular investigations is brought together and rearranged. However much Professor jutikkala may have drawn upon the available modern literature, upon the writings of Heckscher, Clapham, Cole, Ashton, Ashley, Sombart, and other authorities, his book is stamped first and foremost by his own great familiarity with the vast field of his subject, by his own research and experience-especially in the field of agrarian and social history—and by his great versatility as a scholar. The author is not simply a historian with an economic training; he is also very conscious of the fact that economic development never occurs in society in forms which allow of a purely economic exposition. His method is—to     

Carrying forward the Tinbergen initiative in macroeconometrics

Summary The historical roots of macroeconometric model building go back to the studies of Jan Tinbergen in constructing statistical models of The Netherlands and the United States. His work built on the contributions of J.M. Keynes to macroeconomic theory and Simon Kuznets to the design of accounts to measure national income and product. Wassily Leontief's input-output models helped to extend the effort to many industrial sectors. Other economic theorists and statisticians also made important contributions in the 1930s and 1940s. A breakthrough has been the arrival of the electronic computer. Many seemingly impossible tasks are now quite easy. Among the many approaches to economic forecasting, policy analysis, and cyclical analysis, macroeconometric modeling stands out as the most accurate and insightful. There are many challengers, but none that is demonstrably superior on a replicated basis. The present thrust of model building has extended beyond Professor Tinbergen's original work at the national level. World models of economic interdependence are now operational in many international centers.Benjamin Franklin Professor of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.Final draft of the first Tinbergen Lecture delivered on October 24th in The Hague on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the Royal Netherlands Economic Association.     

Misunderstandings concerning income distribution policies

Summary In this essay in honour of Professor P. Hennipman the latter's clarity and precision of expression are chosen as an example of how to avoid misunderstanding of his publications. As counterexamples some twenty-odd misunderstandings are set out by the essay's author in the field of income distribution policies, ranging from that specific subject to the theory of economic policy, to economic science and to science as a whole. Several of these misunderstandings are due to the essay's author, while others seem to prevail either among the general public or among scientists.     

A demand and supply model of economic growth

Summary A demand and supply model of economic growth has been developed. By means of this model a number of characteristics of the growth process have been investigated. Special attention has been given to the causes and consequences of growth disequilibria and the determinants of income distribution.The analysis leads to the conclusion that three growth situations must be distinguished: output is restricted by effective demand, by effective supply, and by the size of the labour force. The causes of growth disequilibria and the determinants of income distribution differ in each of these three cases. In this respect the model is more general than traditional post-keynesian, neo-keynesian and neo-classical growth models.The author is indebted to Professor Frits J. de Jong for his non-desisting support during the preparation of this paper. He is grateful to Mrs. Gerda H. de Jong of Veendam, The Netherlands, and to Dr. James H. Gapinski, Assistant Professor, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida for kindly improving the English of this article.In many respects this article draws heavily upon my doctoral dissertation:De betekenis van vraag- en aanbodfactoren in groeimodellen met één sector, mimeographed, Groningen, 1970.     

Reviews

Abstract

Professor Hugo E. Pipping's work on the vicissitudes of the Bank of Finland (the central bank of the country) is one of the weightiest contributions that has yet been made to Finnish economic history. With the completion of volume lIt he has brought the story up to the beginning of World War I.     

Theo van de Klundert: A frontier economist

Summary Twenty-five years ago, Dr. Theo van de Klundert was appointed as Professor of Economics at Tillburg University. On the occassion of this jubilee the authors review Van de Klundert's contribution to the study of economic science in the The Netherlands. The article focuses on four topics: (1) growth and income distribution, (2) capital theory, resource economics and trade, (3) controversies between Keynesians and (4) open economy macroeconomics. A short remark is made about his teaching. Van de Klundert is praised for the quality and the comprehension of his scientific work.The authors are grateful to S.K. Kuipers and M. Peeters for their useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Phillips ‘loops’ in South Africa∗

Professor Phillips published his famous Phillips curve article in 1958. In his research, however, he observed that wages were rising more rapidly during the upswing of the business cycle, when unemployment was falling, than during the downturn, when unemployment was rising. When data on the respective variables was plotted, a distinct ‘loop’ was found. In the analysis of South African labour statistics, it was found that such a ‘loop’ existed in the White labour market. However, in the case of the Black labour market, only a weak image of a ‘loop’ was found. The real economic forces producing such a ‘loop’ were almost completely absent. This has implications not only for labour management and economic policy in general, but also for development strategies, because it implies that if Black labour had been left to market forces only, they would have been worse off than they are now.     

Iteration in Walras's theory of tatonnement

Summary It has been argued that Léon Walras did not have a theory of economic tatonnement but was instead concerned with a technique of mathematical iteration for the purpose of finding the solutions to the equations of a model of general equilibrium, that his work lacks an account of a means whereby prices are changed, and that he was uninterested in real economic adjustment processes. It is concluded that those judgments are incorrect. It is shown that Walras wanted to develop a realistic theory of time-consuming economic tatonnement in a freely competitive economy, and that he based it on his theories of how prices are changed, of iterative pricing, of entrepreneurial iterative behavior, and of a presumed convergence of the variables to equilibrium.I am grateful to Indiana University of Pennsylvania for a grant that made possible the preparation of this article.     

政府财政政策对经济增长的影响——基于一个资本积累与创新相互作用模型的分析

政府财政政策对经济增长和社会福利的影响,是经济增长理论和宏观公共财政理论研究的重点,已经有大量的研究。本文在一个资本积累与创新相互作用的框架下内生化劳动力供给,假设政府通过征收平滑的收入税为公共支出融资,并且将政府公共支出区分为资本性支出和研发性支出,从而考察了税收和财政支出结构对经济增长的影响及其作用机制。研究发现,当政府通过征收收入税为生产性公共支出融资时,收入税税率与经济增长率之间存在一个倒U形的关系,从而回到了Barro(1990)的结论,尽管本文强调的政府财政政策作用于经济增长的机制与Barro(1990)差别较大;在基准经济(benchmark economy)的参数环境下,财政支出结构与经济增长率之间存在一个倒U型关系,从而经济中存在一个最优的财政支出结构。     

The contribution of agricultural economics to development

Agricultural economics is an applied discipline with a broadly based application to development theory. The importance of agriculture in economic development has led to pressing demands on the role which agricultural economists are required to play. At all stages, a major part of the planning and implementation input is contributed by agricultural economists. The development of agricultural economics was therefore dynamic as well as problem related. Within the Southern African development context, the agricultural economist has had a long standing involvement. For example, Professor F R Tomlinson chaired the important Tomlinson Commission in the 1950s, while Dr Simon Brand is the Chief Executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa. Both are agricultural economists. In general, agricultural economics has contributed to the fields of research and training, smallholder and rural development, project planning and management, and the formulation, planning and analysis of macro‐policy.