The Fall and Rise of Irving Fisher's Macroeconomics

1998 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Dimand
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Constant Velocity ◽  
Phillips Curve ◽  
History Of Economics ◽  
Keynesian Economics ◽  
Real Factor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Introductory Textbooks ◽  
Major Review

The history of economics provides many examples of economists, such as A. A. Cournot, and J. H. Von Thunen, whose work became influential only long after it was written. Others, like Francis A. Walker, loomed large during their careers, only to fade in the discipline's memory. Irving Fisher's reputation has followed a much less common trajectory. Once the most cited monetary economist, the subject of major review articles and the center of controversies over theory and policy, Fisher lost the profession's attention, vanished from citation lists in macroeconomics, and was regarded as an embarrassment by colleagues in his university and his discipline. Then, after his death, his contributions to macroeconomics became increasingly cited and influential, as macroeconomics developed in ways that brought it closer to Fisher's approach. New approaches have been found prefigured in Fisher's work, as when a 1926 article of his was reprinted in the Journal of Political Economy in 1973 as “I Discovered the Phillips Curve” (Fisher, 1997, 8). Fisher was once caricatured in introductory textbooks as the supposed exponent of a constant-velocity version of the quantity theory of money, the exemplar of simplistic pre- Keynesian economics swept away in the Keynesian Revolution, but recently there has been attention to Fisher as, in Keynes's phrase, “the great grandparent” of The General Theory, “who first influenced me strongly towards regarding money as a ‘real’ factor” (Keynes, 1971-89, 14, pp. 203 n.; Dimand, 1995; Kregel, 1988).

scholarly journals Emilio Betti: from the history of law to the general theory of interpretation

2020 ◽  
pp. 30-44
Author(s):  
Iuliia Rossius
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Practical Importance ◽  
Dialectical Tension ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Law ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Hans Georg Gadamer

The goal of this article consists in demonstration of the impact of research in the field of history and theory of law alongside the hermeneutics of Emilio Betti impacted the vector of this philosophical thought. The subject of this article is the lectures read by Emilio Betti (prolusioni) in 1927 and 1948, as well as his writings of 1949 and 1962. Analysis is conducted on the succession of Betti's ideas in these works, which is traced despite the discrepancy in their theme (legal and philosophical). The author indicates “legal” origin of the canons of Bettis’ hermeneutics, namely the canon of autonomy of the object. Emphasis is placed on the problem of objectivity in Betti's theory, as well as on dialectical tension between the historicity of the interpreted subject and strangeness of the object that accompanies legal, as well as any other type of interpretation. The article reveals the key moment of Betti's criticism of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Regarding the question of historicity of the subject of interpretation. The conclusion is made that the origin of the general theory of interpretation lies in the approaches and methods developed and implemented by Betti back in legal hermeneutics and in studying history of law.   Betti's philosophical theory was significantly affected by the idea on the role of modern legal dogma in interpretation of the history of law. Namely this idea that contains the principle of historicity of the subject of interpretation, which commenced  the general hermeneutical theory of Emilio Betti, was realized in canon of the relevance of understanding in the lecture in 1948, and later in the “general theory of interpretation”. The author also underlines that the question of objectivity of understanding, which has crucial practical importance in legal hermeneutics, was transmitted into the philosophical works of E. Betti, finding reflection in dialectic of the subject and object of interpretation.

Twilight and Evening Bell

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
Public Expenditure ◽  
Government Expenditure ◽  
Price Inflation ◽  
Price Controls ◽  
History Of Economics ◽  
Keynesian Economics ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Form

This chapter examines the decline of Keynesian economics, mainly due to its grave political asymmetry: what was politically possible against deflation and depression was not politically possible or feasible against inflation. Deflation and unemployment called for higher public expenditure and lower taxes, which were very agreeable actions from a political perspective. However, lower government expenditure and higher taxes, which price inflation precisely called for, were not politically agreeable. Furthermore, they were not easily effective against wage-price inflation—the modern form of inflation. The chapter explains how the separation of microeconomics from the purview of Keynesian economics and policy preserved a microeconomic model that could not assume an inflationary role. It also considers some legal efforts to arrest the wage-price spiral, including the Nixon administration's wage and price controls, and Milton Friedman's contribution to the history of economics.

General Relativity and Cosmology

2020 ◽  
pp. 227-360
Author(s):  
P. J. E. Peebles
Keyword(s):  
Constant Velocity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Reference Frames ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Inertial Frames ◽  
Moving Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Freely Moving ◽  
The Universe

This chapter discusses the development of physical sciences in seemingly chaotic ways, by paths that are at best dimly seen at the time. It refers to the history of ideas as an important part of any science, and particularly worth examining in cosmology, where the subject has evolved over several generations. It also examines the puzzle of inertia, which traces the connection to Albert Einstein's bold idea that the universe is homogeneous in the large-scale average called “cosmological principle.” The chapter cites Newtonian mechanics that defines a set of preferred motions in space, the inertial reference frames, by the condition that a freely moving body has a constant velocity. It talks about Ernst Mach, who argued that inertial frames are determined relative to the motion of the rest of the matter in the universe.

Our Columnists on the A-Bomb

1950 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-87
Author(s):  
Janet Besse ◽  
Harold D. Lasswell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
General Theory ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
The United States ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Opinion differs about the role of syndicated columnists in the forming of national opinion and in the decision-making process in the United States. Our columnists have been the subject of pioneering studies, but we have a long way to go before the picture can be called historically complete, scientifically precise, or fully satisfactory for policy-making purposes. What the columnists say is an important chapter in the history of the American public, and history is most useful for critical purposes when written close to the event. The general theory of communication and politics can be refined as the details of the opinion process are more fully known.

scholarly journals Journal of the History of Economic Thought Preprints - A.J. Brown, 'Phillips’ Curve', and Economic Networks in the 1950s

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth John Button
Keyword(s):  
Phillips Curve ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of Economic Thought ◽  
Economic Networks ◽  
Wage Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Ordinal Interpretation

This paper is concerned with examining the role of the English economist Arthur (A.J.) Brown in the 1950s debate surrounding the wage-change unemployment relationship. While the publication of William (Bill) Phillips’ 1958 paper, and the subsequent moniker of the “Phillips Curve” attracted a wealth of attention, Brown’s book on the subject, The Great Inflation, and his later work on inflation, has received much less. Here the focus is on redressing somewhat this situation by looking at Brown’s work to see how much it predates Phillips’ paper, and what differences there are to it. We also considers this within the changing institutional structure of English economic networks in the 1950s that led to a relatively rapid acceptance of Phillips’ analysis, and in many cases, to a strong, ordinal interpretation of the Phillips Curve that overshadowed Brown’s work.

scholarly journals Four Species of Reflexivity and History of Economics in Economic Policy Science

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schliesser
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Policy Science ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of Economics ◽  
Economics Profession ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cost

Abstract This paper argues that history of economics has a fruitful, underappreciated role to play in the development of economics, especially when understood as a policy science. This goes against the grain of the last half century during which economics, which has undergone a formal revolution, has distanced itself from its ‘literary’ past and practices precisely with the aim to be a more successful policy science. The paper motivates the thesis by identifying and distinguishing four kinds of reflexivity in economics. The main thesis of this paper is that because these forms of reflexivity are not eliminable, the history of economics must play a constitutive role in economics (and graduate education within economics). An assumption that I clarify in this paper is that the history of economics ought to be part of the subject matter studied by economics when they are interested in policy science. Even if one does not accept the conclusion, the fourfold classification of reflexivity might hold independent interest. The paper is divided in two parts. First, by reflecting on the writings of George Stigler, Paul Samuelson, George and Milton Friedman, I offer a stylized historical introduction to and conceptualization of the themes of this paper. In particular, I identify various historically influential arguments and strategies that reduced the role of history of economics within the economics discipline. In it I also canvass six arguments that try to capture the cost to economics (understood as a science) for sidelining the history of economics from within the discipline. A sub-text of the introduction is that for contingent reasons, post World War II economics evolved into a policy science. Second, by drawing on the work of Kenneth Boulding, in particular, George Soros, Thomas Merton, Gordon Tullock, I distinguish between four species of reflexivity. These are used to then strengthen the argument for the constitutive role of the history of economics within the economics profession. In particular, I argue that so-called Kuhn-losses are especially pernicious when faced with policy choices under so-called Knightian uncertainty.

Why Teach the History of Economics?

1993 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen I. Vaughn
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of Economics ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Twentieth Anniversary

1993 is an auspicious year for the History of Economics Society. Almost exactly twenty years and one month ago the first gathering of historians of economic thought took place in Chicago. It was not exactly the first meeting of the Society since it was officially formed only in 1974 and the first official meeting took place that year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. However, the 1973 meeting demonstrated that there was sufficient interest in the subject to form a society. Hence, this is both the twentieth annual meeting of the History of Economics Society and the twentieth anniversary of its inception.

Remembering Economics

2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Daniel Hammond
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Traffic Accident ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Work Memory ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of Economics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

I showed a draft of my presidential address to a friend the other day. He read for a few minutes, then looked up at me and said, “Your address will be remembered long after The Wealth of Nations, Ricardo's Principles, and The General Theory are all forgotten, but not until then!”Remembering is what we who read, write, and teach history of economics are about. Historians preserve memory; we collect historical facts, organize them, and store them in conceptual filing systems. Remembering accurately and fully is hard work. Memory is tricky. It is always incomplete. It is well known that different witnesses to an event such as a traffic accident can remember the event quite differently, so that their accounts of what happened seem incompatible with each other. They may even appear not to be reports of the same event.

Oswald Spengler and the Theory of Historical Cycles

Antiquity ◽  
1927 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Collingwood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
General Theory ◽  
The West ◽  
Long Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Cycles ◽  
European Thought ◽  
Complete History

Since Plato announced that the course of history returned upon itself in 72,000 years, since Polybius discerned a “circular movement” by which the history of states came back, over and over again, to the same point, the theory of historical cycles has been a commonplace of European thought. Familiar to the thinkers of the Renaissance, it was modified by Vico in the early eighteenth century and again by Hegel in the early nineteenth; and a complete history of the idea would show many curious transformations and cover a long period of time. Here no attempt will be made to summarize this story; the subject of the present paper is the latest and, to ourselves, most striking exposition of the general theory, contained in Dr Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West.

Economists and Biographers

1989 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald E. Moggridge
Keyword(s):  
History Of Economics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

As with most papers written for occasions of this kind, this one has elements of self-indulgence. In this Society, at least, one has a captive audience, some (or most?) of whom may have come for another purpose. At the same time, one has no prescribed theme: if one had one, one organised last year's meeting around it. True, there are constraints: it is after all the History of Economics Society, which constrains the subject somewhat–but only a little; it is an after dinner speech at the end of two long days of meetings, which limits the heaviness of the contents; and it will appear in the Bulletin, which prevents complete absurdities. Yet these constraints are fairly minimal.

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