A Note on a Conversation with Geoff Harcourt

In this note Geoff Harcourt offers his views, via a face to face interview, on a wide range of issues relating to the discipline of economics. He recalls his time as a student at University of Melbourne, his choice of doctoral study and experiences at University of Cambridge, his original intellectual influences and affiliation, and his contributions to economics. He also discusses how economics have evolved over the years, comments on the current status of economic teaching, research and policy advice in Australia, and makes some recommendations to early career researchers. The note also includes a brief bio sketch of Professor Harcourt.     

The old versus the new institutionalism

Marianne Ferber, a 75 year old professor emerita at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has been a central figure in developing both the literature and the institutions of feminist economics. She was one of the first and most effective scholars to challenge Gary Becker's analysis of the economics of the family. Her textbook, The Economics of Women, Men and Work , co-authored with Francine Blau and Anne Winkler, is the standard for courses on women in the economy. Her 400 page annotated bibliography, Women and Work, Paid and Unpaid , published in 1987, is the definitive source on economic research on women's work published up to that point. Her anthology, Beyond Economic Man: feminist theory and economics , co-edited with Julie Nelson, is the first to pull together the exciting new work being done by people who have an explicitly feminist perspective on economics. She was a member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession in the 1970s, a founding member of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) and for 1995 and 1996 served as IAFFE's president. This interview was conducted in January 1998.     

Pigou on philosophy and religion

Abstract

This article discusses a group of essays on ethical issues written by Pigou between 1900 and 1908. It is argued that they contain the foundations of his economic philosophy. Pigou's research on the meaning and content of the good merged into his definition of welfare, and his interest in religion as a subjective experience resurfaced in the subjective framework of his economics. A methodological pragmatism informed his economics as well as his ethics; moreover, the endorsement of interpersonal comparisons of the good in the ethical texts was consistent with Pigou's adoption of utility comparisons in welfare economics. Pigou's philosophical pessimism was reflected in his analysis of the economic evils of society, eventually leading to his advocacy of governmental intervention to foster economic welfare. The article contends that Pigou's philosophy derived not only from Sidgwick, as commonly believed, but also from G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica.     

The interaction between Leontief and Sraffa: No meeting,no citation,no attention?

Abstract

Samuelson often regretted that Leontief and Sraffa never cited each other (true), and seemed to pay no attention to the other's work (false). In the Foley interview Leontief suggested he never met Sraffa (false). Archival evidence shows that in the 1940s Sraffa studied Leontief's classic The Structure of American Economy; he also owned the rare mimeographed supplement, and did some calculations on Leontief's first input–output table. Leontief and Sraffa met in Cambridge (UK) in 1950 and later. In the 1980s Leontief wrote an ambitious empirical paper on technological change, rejected by the AER, and not widely read. It studied some Sraffian topics without Sraffian terminology. I construct a hypothetical reswitching example using Leontief's statistics.     

Creating a Space where Gender Matters: Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012) talks with Ann Mari May and Gale Summerfield

Abstract

In 2009, Elinor Ostrom received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her work, especially on governance of the commons. Trained as a political scientist, Ostrom embraced interdisciplinary research and transdisciplinary collaboration. Ann Mari May and Gale Summerfield's interview with Ostrom, conducted in fall 2011, illustrates the relevance of her work to feminist economics as well as her impressive accomplishments as the first woman recipient of the Nobel prize in economics and as a pioneering woman in academia. Ostrom died on June 12, 2012.     

Lachmann and the wilderness: On Lachmann's radical subjectivism

Abstract

This paper deals with the question why in the 1940s and 1950s Ludwig Lachmann (1906–1990) failed to revive Austrian economics. Lake Keynes and Hayek, Lachmann pointed out that expectations, and hence knowledge, are important determinants of (cyclical fluctuations in) investment and economic activity. He thereby emphasized that the process of knowledge acquisition is indeterminate and open‐ended. This indeterminateness is difficult to reconcile with neoclassical attempts to provide economics with internally consistent microfoundations. This fundamental difference between his and the neoclassical research agenda explains Lachmann's failure to revive Austrian economics.     

Neither Lausanne nor Cambridge: Pantaleoni and the missing boundary between economics and sociology

Abstract

By the turn of the twentieth century, Lausanne and Cambridge were the centres of diffusion of two rival versions of marginalism. This paper focuses on the position of Maffeo Pantaleoni, a leading figure of the late nineteenth century ‘renaissance’ of Italian political economy, with respect to the eminent representatives of the two schools: Pareto and Marshall. Pantaleoni's position is examined with reference to the two main bones of contention between Pareto and Marshall, namely general as opposed to partial equilibrium, and pure as opposed to mixed economics.     

Slonimsky's view on Antoine-Augustin Cournot∗

Abstract

In 1878 the Russian Liudvig Zinov'sevich Slonimsky published a lengthy article on the mathematization of economics. To defend the legacy of applying mathematics in the study of economics, he made ample uses of both von Thünen and Cournot's works. The article published in Russian and in the Russian Vestnik Evropy (Journal of Europe) has passed virtually ignored by economists. This notes gives a complete account of Slonimsky's references to Cournot's work.     

The Fault Line between Keynes and the Cambridge Keynesians: A Review Essay

This essay reviews Michael Ambrosi's important but neglected book on the formative period of Keynesian economics. The book traces the evolution of a Cambridge macroeconomic tradition running from Marshall and Pigou to Keynes, and interprets The General Theory as a response to Pigou's analysis of unemployment. Ambrosi also argues that Keynes's disciples, Richard Kahn, Nicholas Kaldor and Joan Robinson, were, in the 1930s, wedded to a Pigovian methodology and did not immediately recognise that Keynes had redefined the meaning of equilibrium in The General Theory. Keynes's attempt to redefine the analytical basis of neoclassical economics was thwarted, not merely by the neoclassical synthesis, but by those who claimed to be the inheritors and guardians of his vision.     

The history of economics as economics?

Abstract

This paper critically evaluates the current decline of the relationship between economics and the history of economics, and proposes a framework called the panorama-cum-scenario model for the practice of the history of economics. Starting with the Hegelian thesis that the history of economics is economics itself, the paper argues that such a relationship is necessary but not sufficient because the history of economics is a metatheory addressed to economic theory. The history of economics needs a panoramic view of the subject and a scenario for the construction, interpretation, and evaluation of the system of economics. The panorama-cum-scenario model enables us to work on the history of economics not only by historical and rational reconstruction but also by global reconstruction. Nietzsche's anti-Hegelian viewpoint and Heidegger's hermeneutical standpoint are useful for identifying the role of historical research in developing economic knowledge based on the panorama-cum-scenario model. Several approaches to the history of economics are examined in light of the panorama-cum-scenario model. Schumpeter's history of economics is interpreted as an example of the panorama-cum-scenario model.     

Measurement,incentives and constraintsin Stigler's economics of science *

Abstract

George J. Stigler's seminal role as one of the founders of the economics of science is summarized and evaluated. His main contribution rests in his asking an array of important questions and arguing persuasively for the application of empirical, and especially statistical, techniques to the answering of those questions. He asks whether and how science progresses; whether a scientist's biography is important in understanding his science; what characteristics of a scientist are most complementary to success in science; and how the professionalization of science redirects the attention of scientists more toward internal puzzle-solving, and less toward applied relevance.     

An Interview with Barbara Bergmann: Leading feminist economist

Barbara Bergmann, Emerita Professor of Economics at both the American University and the University of Maryland, has been a leader in the development and establishment of feminist economics, in scholarly, policy and organizational capacities. Professor Bergmann is particularly known for her crowding model of discrimination. She is the author of an excellent, accessible undergraduate textbook, The Economic Emergence of Women (1986) . She has authored several policy-oriented books, including In Defense of Affirmative Action (1996a), Saving Our Children from Poverty: what the United States can learn from France (1996b) , and What Child Care System for America? (2000). Professor Bergmann is past president of the Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics, the Eastern Economic Association and the International Association for Feminist Economics. She received her PhD in economics from Harvard in 1959. This interview was conducted at the ASSA meetings in Chicago on 4 January 1998.     

The fault line of axiomatization: Walras' linkage of physics with economics

Abstract

Economists have often aligned the field of economics with physics; in the process seeking to enhance the rigor of economics by mathematizing it. In the late nineteenth century there was no more ardent champion of this view of what economics should become than Leon Walras. His own writings, though, betray a tension between comprehending this mathematization as proceeding in parallel with physics or through a metaphorical analogy with physics. The limitations in Walras' ability to axiomatize economics reveal a flawed effort to establish the foundations of economics by analogy; this difficulty has persisted through the twentieth century.     

The Fable of the Allegory: The Wizard of Oz in Economics

L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has become popular as a teaching tool in economics. It has been argued that it was written as an allegory of Populist demands for a bimetallic monetary system in the late 19th century. The author argues that Baum was not sympathetic to Populist views and did not write the story as a monetary allegory.     

C.E. Ferguson and the Neoclassical Theory of Capital: A Matter of Faith

In 1969 the American neoclassical economist C.E. Ferguson wrote that reliance on neoclassical aggregate production and distribution theory is a ‘matter of faith’ to be sorted out (he says ‘answered’) by econometricians. Ferguson was criticized on both sides of the debate for invoking this religious metaphor. Using the methodological framework of A.J. Cohen & G.C. Harcourt (2005), Introduction: capital theory controversy: scarcity, production, equilibrium, and time, in: A. Cohen, G.C. Harcourt & C. Bliss (Eds) Capital Theory, 3 Vols. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, this paper argues that faith plays a recurring role in all capital controversies and especially in modern theories of growth that rely wholesale on the aggregate production function. Ferguson's faith proves to be much more insightful than previously recognized.     

Disequilibrium as the origin,originality, and challenges of Clower's microfoundations of monetary theory

Abstract

Robert W. Clower's article “A Reconsideration of the Microfoundations of Monetary Theory” (1967) deeply influenced the course of modern monetary economics. On the one hand, it questioned Don Patinkin's (1956) project to integrate monetary and Walrasian value theory. On the other hand, it was the fountainhead of the cash-in-advance models à la Robert J. Lucas (1980), one of the most widely used approaches to monetary theory since the 1980s. Despite this influence, Clower's project to integrate monetary and value theory remains an enigma. My paper intends to resolve it. This is a difficult task since Clower never completed the monetary theory outlined in his 1967 article. To overcome this difficulty, I characterise the intellectual context from which Clower's contribution emerged and have recourse to a reconstruction of his project. This reconstruction is based on the analysis of published and unpublished materials, written by Clower before and after the 1967 article. It is argued that Clower sought to elaborate a disequilibrium monetary theory whilst retaining the two pillars of Patinkin's integration, i.e., the introduction of money into utility functions and the real-balance effect. I trace the origins, account for the originality, and discuss the challenges of this project.     

Open and closed systems and the Cambridge School

In recent years a group of researchers at Cambridge (UK) have (re)introduced conceptions of open and closed systems into economics. In doing so they have employed these categories in ways that, in my assessment, both facilitate a significant critique of current disciplinary practices and also point to more fruitful ways of proceeding. In an issue of this journal, Andrew Mearman has advanced three criticisms of the Cambridge position which, if valid, would seriously undermine this assessment. Below I defend the Cambridge position against Mearman's criticisms.     

Naturalised epistemology and economics

The relevance to economics of naturalised epistemology (alsoknown as the naturalistic turn) from philosophy of science hasrecently been argued by economic methodologists, especiallyby D. Wade Hands (Reflection Without Rules: Economic Methodologyand Contemporary Science Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress, 2001). This concept is held by Hands to constitute partof the ‘new economic methodology’ that consistsof the ‘interpenetration of economics and science theory’.Contrary to Hands's case, naturalised epistemology is shownhere not to represent a qualitatively new concept, to possesslittle coherent meaning, and to be incapable of charting aninnovative way forward for economics. Although there are moreissues concerning naturalism bearing on economics than are notedby Hands, three specific limitations of naturalised epistemologyare discussed. These and other limitations are related to theeconomics examples Hands proposes suggesting the usefulnessof naturalised epistemology for economics.     

On the importance of institutions and forms of organisation in Piero Sraffa's economics: the case of business cycles,money, and economic policy

Abstract

This paper is based on an investigation of the Sraffa Archives and tries to characterise Piero Sraffa's approach to business cycles and economic policy. It includes two parts. The first part of the paper shows the importance of economic institutions and social conventions in Sraffa's contribution to economics and their relation with social conflicts. The second part of the paper shows how this importance permits to understand better business cycles and economic policy but also indirectly contributes to a re-interpretation of Sraffa's contribution to economics.