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Volume 42 - Issue 4 - December 2020

Journal of the History of Economic Thought Volume 42 - Issue 4 -
Contents

Articles

  • RICARDO’S SIDE OF THE MALTHUS PAPERS IN THE COLLECTION OF KANTO GAKUEN UNIVERSITY

  • Christophe Depoortère
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    28 September 2020, pp. 483-505

  • In 1997 and 2004, John Pullen and Trevor Hughes Parry published a set of manuscripts by and relating to Thomas Robert Malthus held at the Kanto Gakuen University in Japan. Their achievement is impressive. However, a few important elements relating to these manuscripts escaped their attention. These elements concern Malthus, but also his very good friend and theoretical opponent David Ricardo. The purpose of this article is to point out these elements inasmuch as they enable 1) the establishment of the correct dating and contextualization of some manuscripts, and 2) the attribution of the true authorship of some other material.

  • NEW PERSPECTIVES ON HENRY LUDWELL MOORE’S USE OF HARMONIC ANALYSIS

  • Paul Turner, Justine Wood
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    28 September 2020, pp. 507-520

  • This paper reconsiders the contribution of Henry Ludwell Moore to dynamic economics through the use of harmonic analysis. We show that Moore’s analysis is innovative in its use of the Fourier transformation for the identification of cycles with different periodicities. This enables Moore to identify cycles of longer length with more precision than would be the case for the standard methodology. We are able to replicate the main features of his results and confirm the existence of a rainfall cycle with a periodicity similar to that of the business cycle (eight years). However, we find that the evidence for a longer (thirty-three-year) rainfall cycle is weaker than Moore indicates. We also argue that a central theme of Moore’s analysis—the relationship among rainfall, agricultural productivity, and the business cycle—marks an early precursor of the “real business cycle” approach. George Stigler’s (1962) dismissal of Moore’s work on cycles as “a complete failure” is therefore, in our opinion, unfair. Instead, we argue that, although his work is certainly flawed, it nevertheless deserves a place in both the history of business cycle theory and empirical economics.

  • WAR AND PEACE: ARTHUR CECIL PIGOU AS A PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL DURING WORLD WAR I

  • Rogério Arthmar, Michael McLure
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    28 September 2020, pp. 521-538

  • This study reflects on Arthur Cecil Pigou’s role in public debate during the initial phase of the First World War over whether Britain should negotiate a peace treaty with Germany. Its main goal is to provide evidence that the “Cambridge Professor” framed his approach to this highly controversial issue from theoretical propositions on trade, industrial peace, and welfare that he had developed in previous works. After reviewing his contributions on these subjects, Pigou’s letter to The Nation in early 1915, suggesting an open move by the Allies towards an honorable peace with Germany, is presented along with his more elaborate thoughts on this same theme put down in a private manuscript. The negative reactions to Pigou’s letter are then scrutinized, particularly the fierce editorial published by The Morning Post. A subsequent version of Pigou’s plea for peace, delivered in his London speech late in 1915, is detailed, listing the essential conditions for a successful conclusion of the conflict. To come full circle, the paper recapitulates Pigou’s postwar considerations on diplomacy, free trade, and colonialism. The concluding remarks bring together the theoretical and applied branches of Pigou’s thoughts on war and peace.

  • EFFICIENCY WITHOUT OPTIMALITY: ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES AND POLLUTION PRICING IN THE LATE 1960S

  • Nathalie Berta
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    22 January 2021, pp. 539-562
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  • In the late 1960s, new environmental policies emerged that attempted to reach predetermined pollution standards in a cost-effective way: i.e., the “standard-and-tax” approach proposed by William J. Baumol and Wallace E. Oates, and the permits market approach proposed by John Dales. This paper describes the early history of the two approaches, and compares them. Although today they refer to different traditions, namely Pigovian versus Coasean, and are often contrasted in the literature, these cost-effective solutions emerged at the same time and for the same reasons. First, they both tried to promote incentives-based policies against traditional regulations; second, they criticized the optimal Pigovian tax, which raised the contentious issue of measuring pollution damage. More broadly, they emerged as a kind of pragmatic compromise, fed by a common attempt to move toward more practical policies: reaching efficiency without optimality, while relying on standards whose setting is a matter for political decision.

  • EDMOND MALINVAUD’S CRITICISMS OF THE NEW CLASSICAL ECONOMICS: RESTORING THE NATURE AND THE RATIONALE OF THE OLD KEYNESIANS’ OPPOSITION

  • Matthieu Renault
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    22 January 2021, pp. 563-585

  • Unlike standard accounts, recent research in the history of macroeconomics has given increasing attention to the Old Keynesians’ criticisms of the New Classical Economics. In this paper, I address the case of Edmond Malinvaud, who began opposing the New Classical Economics from the early 1980s and did so throughout the following thirty years. This study shows that his opposition was radical, i.e., multi-dimensional and systematic, and owes to the methodology and the practice of macroeconometric modeling. In turn, this twofold result sheds light on the nature and the rationale of the Old Keynesians’ opposition to the New Classical Economics from the 1970s onwards, which can be interpreted along the same lines.

Book Reviews

INDEX TO VOLUME 42, 2020

Front Cover (OFC, IFC) and matter

  • HET volume 42 issue 4 Cover and Front matter

  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    22 January 2021, pp. f1-f4
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Back Cover (OBC, IBC) and matter

  • HET volume 42 issue 4 Cover and Back matter

  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    22 January 2021, pp. b1-b5
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