Search results for " storia del pensiero economico"

The shaping of public economic discourse in postwar America: the 1947 meat shortage and Franco Modigliani's meat plan

2015

This paper discusses the American debate over price controls and economic stabilization after World War II, when the transition from a war economy to a peace economy was characterized by bottlenecks in the productive system and shortages of food and other basic consumer goods, directly affecting the living standard of the population, the public opinion, and political discourse. Specifically, we will focus on the economist Franco Modigliani and his proposal for a "Plan to meet the problem of rising meat and other food prices without bureaucratic controls." The plan prepared by Modigliani in October 1947 was based on a system of taxes and subsidies to foster a proper distribution of disposabl…

BOOK REVIEWS: Bernard E. Harcourt , The Illusion of Free Markets; Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order

2015

The review presents the book The Illusion of Free Markets; Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order describing the contents and showing its historiographical view on the link between the market and legal order.

Wesley Mitchell, Arthur Burns and Trygve Haavelmo on business cycles The two Encyclopaedia of the social sciences (1930–1935 and 1968)

2012

The paper presents a brief reconstruction of the history of the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1930-1935 and 1968) a 15 volume major editorial enterprise that was accomplished under the direction of Columbia economist E.R.A. Seligman. It then provides an analysis of the main entries that were devoted to business cycle theory, namely those by Wesley C. Mitchell, Arthur Burns and Trygve Haavelmo.

Building up a multilateral strategy for the United States: Jacob Viner, Alvin Hansen and the Council on Foreign Relations (1939-1945)

2009

Structural change in a Ricardian world economy: The role of extensive rent

2019

Abstract We study an implication of the Ricardian theory of differential extensive rent in a free trade regime. To this effect we develop a Ricardian two country two commodity open economy model. We assume that, unlike labour, land is heterogeneous both within and across countries and that the ratio of high to low quality land is different among the trading countries. By means of a numerical example we show that as the process of worldwide capital accumulation (and population growth) proceeds an industrial country may find it convenient to increase its domestic corn production and even reverse completely the pattern of its imports and exports.

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION, HEREDITARIANISM, AND EUGENICS. A HARVARD TALE

2019

This chapter documents how eugenics, scientific racism, and hereditarianism survived at Harvard well into the interwar years. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Thomas Nixon Carver and Frank W. Taussig published works in which they established a close nexus between an individual’s economic position and his biological fitness. Carver, writing in 1929, argued that social class rigidities are attributable to the inheritance of superior and inferior abilities on the respective social class levels and proposed an “economic test of fitness” as a eugenic criterion to distinguish worthy from unworthy individuals. In 1932, Taussig, together with Carl Smith Joslyn, published American Business Leaders…

Two minds that never met: Frank H. knight on john M. keynes once again — A documentary note

2016

This note presents new archival evidence about Frank H. Knight’s views on John M. Keynes. The relevant material is composed of a series of lecture notes taken by Perham C. Nahl in Frank H. Knight’s course on Business Cycles at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 1936. It emerges from the notes that the methodological gap between Keynes and Knight was irreducible, which explains the harsh tone of Knight’s published review of The General Theory. Connected to this is Knight’s strenuous defense of the ‘postulates of classical political economy’ as criticized by Keynes in chapter 2 of his book, an argument that was better expounded in the classroom than in the review. However…

On the limits to the long-period method in classical economics. A note

2001

On a first reading of Theory of Production, Kurz & Salvadori (1995) appear to confine the empirical domain of the long-period models of the classical theory of value and distribution to stationary economies with non-constant returns to scale and to growing economies with constant returns to scale. Such a reading is shown to be untenable since it merges the two levels of exploring the extension of a model and of testing a theoretical hypothesis. Conversely, the way Kurz & Salvadori tackle the problems of price dynamics and returns to scale in growing economies is shown to be compatible with what appears to be Sraffa's (implicit) strategy of research.

Consumption patterns, development and growth: Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Robert Malthus

2003

In this paper we combine the classical analysis of luxury consumption with the classical theories of development and growth. We also focus on the role played, within classical economics, by institutional factors such as the structure of property rights and contractual arrangements in determining consumption patterns and investment in agriculture. In particular, we show that Ricardo's and Malthus' different views on the role of consumption expenditure in promoting growth depend on Ricardo's acceptance (Malthus' refusal) of Say's law of markets and on Ricardo's exclusion (Malthus' inclusion) of a non-commodity option such as leisure from (in) the range of available consumption alternatives.

Piero Sraffa on utility and the 'subjective method' in the 1920s: A tentative appraisal of Sraffa's unpublished manuscripts

2001

The paper reconstructs Sraffa's assessment of utility-based and individualistic explanations of demand in Marshallian economics in the light of some fresh evidence provided by Sraffa's unpublished manuscripts of the 1920s. It is shown that Sraffa criticised the standard Marshallian explanation of individual consumption choices, emphasised the independent measurement requirement in explanation, lacked enthusiasm for the heuristic potentialities of the 'subjective method' in economic theorising and strove for an analysis of the phenomena of interdependence in the sphere of production as well as in the sphere of consumption.