What is this thing called ‘capital’?
28 May, 2015 at 15:10 | Posted in Economics | 2 CommentsIt is important, for the record, to recognize that key participants in the debate openly admitted their mistakes. Samuelson’s seventh edition of Economics was purged of errors. Levhari and Samuelson published a paper which began, ‘We wish to make it clear for the record that the nonreswitching theorem associated with us is definitely false’ … Leland Yeager and I jointly published a note acknowledging his earlier error and attempting to resolve the conflict between our theoretical perspectives … However, the damage had been done, and Cambridge, UK, ‘declared victory’: Levhari was wrong, Samuelson was wrong, Solow was wrong, MIT was wrong and therefore neoclassical economics was wrong. As a result there are some groups of economists who have abandoned neoclassical economics for their own refinements of classical economics. In the United States, on the other hand, mainstream economics goes on as if the controversy had never occurred. Macroeconomics textbooks discuss ‘capital’ as if it were a well-defined concept — which it is not, except in a very special one-capital-good world (or under other unrealistically restrictive conditions). The problems of heterogeneous capital goods have also been ignored in the ‘rational expectations revolution’ and in virtually all econometric work.
Highly recommended reading for Paul Romer and other ‘busy’ economists …
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CAPITAL CONTROVERSY, POSTKEYNESIAN
ECONOMICS AND THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC
THOUGHT:
Click to access arestis972.pdf
Essays in Honour of Geoff Harcourt Volume One
Edited by Philip Arestis, Gabriel Palma and Malcolm Sawyer
First published 1997 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
CONTRIBUTORS:
Heinz W.Arndt, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Mauro Baranzini, Centro di Studi Bancari, Vezia-Lugano, Italy
William J.Baumol, New York University, United States of America
Christopher Bliss, University of Oxford, England
Heinrich Bortis, Université de Fribourg, Switzerland
A.W.Bob Coats, University of Nottingham, England
Avi J.Cohen, York University, Toronto, Canada
Bernard Corry, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, England
Lilia Costabile, Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy
Paul Dalziel, Lincoln University, New Zealand
William Darity, Jr, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, United States of America
Paul Davidson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States of America
John B.Davis, Marquette University, Milwaukee, United States of America
Phyllis Deane, University of Cambridge, England
Robert Dixon, University of Melbourne, Australia
Sheila C.Dow, University of Stirling, Scotland
Helmar Drost, York University, Toronto, Canada
John Eatwell, New School, New York, United States of America
Christopher A.Gregory, Australian National University, Australia
Peter Groenewegen, University of Sydney, Australia
Harald Hagemann, Universität Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany
Omar F.Hamouda, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States of America
John Hatch, University of Adelaide, Australia
Geoffrey M.Hodgson, University of Cambridge, England
Hans E.Jensen, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States of America
John E.King, La Trobe University, Australia
Heinz D.Kurz, Institut für Volkswirtschaftspolitik, Graz, Austria
Michael S.Lawlor, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United
States of America
Andrea Maneschi, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, United States of America
Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, Università di Roma, ‘La Sapienza’, Italy
Luigi L.Pasinetti, Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy
Mark Perlman, University of Pittsburgh, United States of America
Ray Petrides, Murdoch University, Australia
Stephen Pratten, University of Cambridge, England
Colin Rogers, University of Adelaide, Australia
Alessandro Roncaglia, Università di Roma, ‘La Sapienza’, Italy
Robert Rowthorn, University of Cambridge, England
Thomas K.Rymes, Carlton University, Ottawa, Canada
Neri Salvadori, Università di Pisa, Italy
Paul A.Samuelson, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States of America
Roberto Scazzieri, Università degli Studi, Bologna, Italy
Robert M.Solow, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States of America
John K.Whitaker, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, United States of America
Comment by Jan Milch— 31 May, 2015 #
Refining classical economics is not any better than Neoclassical economics. It’s as if biologists fell into two camps: Genesis is literally true and Intelligent Design.
Comment by Thornton Hall— 28 May, 2015 #