Evolution of the Market Process
From the outset, the Austrian and Swedish schools of thought within economics have shared a common thread, thereby creating a generation of close connections between the main thinkers from each tradition. This volume is the first attempt at focusing on this interesting theme in economics. Topics covered in this impressive volume include market process theory, technological change and capital theory. With contributions from a wide variety of scholars including Axel Leijonhufvud, Harald Hagemann and Lars Magnusson, Evolution of the Market Process provides an important contribution to an intriguing debate. Academics and students with an interest in these two schools of thought will find this book to be a valuable asset, while those with an interest in economics generally will also see this as an important addition to their reading lists.
Michel Bellet is Professor of Economics at the University of Saint Etienne, France. Sandye Gloria-Palermo is Professor of Economics at the University of the French West-Indies, Guadeloupe. Abdallah Zouache is Assistant Professor at the University of Jean Monnet, France. Routledge studies in the history of economics
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Samuels 52 Competing Economic Theories Essays in memory of Giovanni Caravale Sergio Nisticò and Domenico Tosato 53 Economic Thought and Policy in Less Developed Europe The 19th century Edited by Michalis Psalidopoulos and Maria-Eugenia Almedia Mata 54 Family Fictions and Family Facts Harriet Martineau, Adolphe Quetelet and the population question in England 1798–1859 Brian Cooper 55 Eighteenth-Century Economics Peter Groenewegen 56 The Rise of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment Edited by Tatsuya Sakamoto and Hideo Tanaka 57 Classics and Moderns in Economics, Vol. I Essays on nineteenth- and twentieth-century economic thought Peter Groenewegen 58 Classics and Moderns in Economics, Vol. II Essays on nineteenth- and twentieth-century economic thought Peter Groenewegen 59 Marshall’s Evolutionary Economics Tiziano Raffaelli 60 Money, Time and Rationality in Max Weber Austrian connections Stephen D. Parsons 61 Classical Macroeconomics Some modern variations and distortions James C.W. Ahiakpor 62 The Historical School of Economics in England and Japan Tamotsu Nishizawa 63 Classical Economics and Modern Theory Studies in long-period analysis Heinz D. Kurz and Neri Salvadori 64 A Bibliography of Female Economic Thought to 1940 Kirsten K. Madden, Janet A. Sietz and Michele Pujol 65 Economics, Economists and Expectations From microfoundations to macroeconomics Warren Young, Robert Leeson and William Darity Jr 66 The Political Economy of Public Finance in Britain, 1767–1873 Takuo Dome 67 Essays in the History of Economics Warren J. Samuels, Willie Henderson, Kirk D. Johnson and Marianne Johnson 68 History and Political Economy Essays in honour of P.D. Groenewegen Edited by Tony Aspromourgos and John Lodewijks 69 The Tradition of Free Trade Lars Magnusson 70 Evolution of the Market Process Austrian and Swedish economics Edited by Michel Bellet, Sandye Gloria-Palermo and Abdallah Zouache Evolution of the Market Process Austrian and Swedish economics
Edited by Michel Bellet, Sandye Gloria-Palermo and Abdallah Zouache First published 2004 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2004 Michel Bellet, Sandye Gloria-Palermo and Abdallah Zouache Typeset in Perpetua by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear Printed and bound in Great Britain by to come All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data to come
ISBN 0-415-31683-9 Contents
Notes on contributors xii Preface xvi
PART I The meeting of Austrian and Swedish economics 1 1 The metamorphoses of neoclassical economics 3 AXEL LEIJONHUFVUD 2 Swedish influences, Austrian advances: the contributions of the Swedish and Austrian Schools to market process theory 20 CHRISTOPHER J. COYNE AND PETER J. BOETTKE
PART II The Stockholm School 33 3 How did the great Swedish economists consider their role in public debate? The views of Knut Wicksell, Gustav Cassel, Eli Heckscher, Bertil Ohlin and Gunnar Myrdal 35 BENNY CARLSON AND LARS JONUNG 4 Gunnar Myrdal and the Stockholm School 57 LARS MAGNUSSON
PART III Money and the business cycle 67 5 Wicksell on technical change, real wages and employment 69 MAURO BOIANOVSKY AND HARALD HAGEMANN x Contents 6 The loose link: Hayek, Lindahl and Myrdal on money 94 HANS-MICHAEL TRAUTWEIN
7 Business cycle and capital theory: when Lundberg meets Hayek and Keynes 114 MICHEL BELLET AND ABDALLAH ZOUACHE
8 Monetary regimes and international co-ordination: what Wicksell would have said about them 135 DOMINIQUE TORRE AND ELISE TOSI
PART IV Capital theory 153
9 Austrian production processes and firms 155 JEAN MAGNAN DE BORNIER
10 The ‘Wicksell connection’ and the Austrian theory of capital: which connections? 170 OLIVIER JENN-TREYER
11 To what extent is the Austrian theory of capital Austrian? 197 SANDYE GLORIA-PALERMO AND GIULIO PALERMO
PART V Expectations and money 211
12 Hayek and Lindahl on disequilibrium dynamics 213 CARLO ZAPPIA
13 Lundberg and Lachmann on expectations 230 MICHEL BELLET AND JACQUES DURIEU
14 Have the Swedish and the Austrian Schools influenced the French School? 253 GILLES JACOUD Contents xi PART VI Methodology 269
15 Hayek’s and Myrdal’s stance on economic planning 271 ROBERT NADEAU
16 Hayek with Descartes and Durkheim: reason and the individual 306 RAGIP EGE
Index 321 Contributors
Michel Bellet is Professor of Economics at the University of Saint-Etienne. He is the co-editor (with C. L’Harmet) of Industry, Space and Competition: The Con- tribution of Economists of the Past (Cheltenham: Edgar Elgar, 1998). He has pub- lished several articles in the field of history of political economy in History of Economic Ideas, Revue d’économie politique. Peter J. Boettke is the Deputy Director of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy and Professor of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA. He is the editor of the Review of Austrian Economics. He has published a number of books, for example, Calculation and Coordination: Essays on Socialism and Transitional Political Economy (Routledge, 2001) and also many articles in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, History of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Market Process, Critical Review, Public Choice, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, and Cultural Dynamics. Mauro Boianovsky is currently Professor of History of Economic Thought and Monetary Economics at the Universidade of Brasilia, Brazil. He has published many articles in History of Political Economy, the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, the Cambridge Journal of Economics, the American Journal of Eco- nomics and Sociology, and the Journal of the History of Economic Thought. He was also contributed to a number of collected volumes. He is the winner of the Best Article Award (History of Economics Society, 1999) and the Prize for Best Article (Brazilian Economic Association, 1996 and 1998). Benny Carlson is Associate Professor in the Department of Economic History at the University of Lund, Sweden. His main interest is the history of eco- nomic ideas, especially the spread of ideas, in particular in the balance between the State, the market and civil society. His work covers the following fields: the Swedish economic liberals’ view of the State during the first half of the twentieth century; American regulation and deregulation; the spread of the ideas of German Katheder and State socialism and American institutional- Contributors xiii ism to Sweden; American welfare reform of the 1990s; American welfare capitalism of the early twentieth century; and immigrants and labour market politics in the major cities of Sweden. He has published several books, and several articles in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, and the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought. Christopher J. Coyne is a Research Fellow at the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, USA. His fields of interest are: Austrian economics, political economy and new institutional economics. His entry on ‘Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992)’ (co- authored with Peter Boettke) is forthcoming in the Dictionary of Modern Amer- ican Philosophers, edited by Dan Krier and Jean Van Delinder (Thoemmes Press). Jean Magnan de Bornier is currently Professor of Economics at the Univer- sity of Aix-Marseilles 3. He previously taught at the Universities of Rouen (1974–83) and Dijon (1984–90). His main research interests are the history of political economy, with publications mainly on the Austrian School of eco- nomics and law and economics as applied to industrial organisation. Jacques Durieu is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Sainte-Etienne (France). His fields of interests include game theory and the history of economic thought. He has published articles in Games and Economic Behavior, the International Journal of Game Theory and Economic Theory. Ragip Ege is Professor of Economics at the University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France. His article, ‘La valeur chez Marx: construction d’un objet analytique’, is forthcoming in a special issue of the French journal Economies et Sociétés. Sandye Gloria-Palermo is Professor of Economics at the University of the French West Indies, in Guadeloupe, France. She specialises in the work of the Austrian School of Economics. She is the author of an anthology, Modern Aus- trian Economics, 3 vols (Pickering and Chatto Publishers) a book, The Evolution of Austrian Economics: From Menger to Lachmann (Routledge), and of various papers on international reviews. Harald Hagemann is Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Hoheinheim, Stuttgart. His main areas of research are: macroeconomic theory and policy, technological change and employment, growth and structural change and history of economic thought. He is managing editor of the Journal of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics and member of the editorial board of the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought. He has published many articles on Austrian Economics and has edited several books on history of eco- nomic thought, notably The Legacy of Hicks (with O. Hamouda). xiv Contributors Gilles Jacoud is Professor Economics at the University of Saint-Etienne, France. He is author of several books and articles on money and banking and on the history of economic thought. Olivier Jenn-Treyer is a lecturer at the University of Paris XII, and member of PHARE (University of Paris 1). Lars Jonung has been Research Adviser at DG ECFIN, the European Commis- sion, Brussels, since September 2000 dealing with macroeconomic issues. He was previously Professor of Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics. His research is focused on monetary and fiscal policies, particularly on the policy of the Riksbank, on monetary unions and exchange rate arrangements, on inflationary expectations and perceptions, business cycle issues, and on the history of economic thought. He served as chief economic adviser to Prime Minister Carl Bildt in 1992–94. He has been on the board of a number of listed Swedish companies. He was economic adviser to the Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken in 198991. Jonung has published several books, The Stockholm School of Economics Revisited (1991), Lessons for EMU from the History of Monetary Unions (with M.D. Bordo), and Bertil Ohlin: A Centennial Celebration, 1899–1999 (with R. Findlay and M. Lundahl, co-editors). Axel Leijonhufvud is Professor of Monetary Theory and Policy at the Univer- sity of Trento, Italy, and Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles, USA. He is a specialist in several fields, including the evolution of modern macroeconomics, the transformation of socialist systems, monetary theory, European economic history, and computable economics. He has pub- lished many articles in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Literature, the Swedish Journal of Economics, Oxford Economic Papers, the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, the Journal of Economic Methodology, the Southern Economic Journal, and many books. He has also contributed to a number of collected volumes. Lars Magnusson is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Economic History, Uppsala, and Research Director at the National Institute for Working Life, Stockholm, Sweden. He is the author of Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language (Routledge, 1994) and An Economic History of Sweden (Rout- ledge, 2000). Robert Nadeau is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the Université du Québec à Montréal. His general field of research is philo- sophy of social sciences but he specialises in comparative epistemology and methodology of economics. He has edited or co-edited many books and special issues of different journals in this area. He contributed to the Handbook of Economic Methodology (1998), edited by John B. Davis, D. Wade Hands and Contributors xv Uskali Mäki, with an article on ‘Spontaneous Order’. He is currently finishing a book on Hayek and the Refutation of Socialism. Giulio Palermo is researcher in Political Economy at the University of Brescia, Italy. He has worked on the socialist calculation debate and the relations between Austrian economics, new institutional economics and Marxism. He has published a book (Manifestolibri) and some articles in international jour- nals such as the Cambridge Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Issues, the Review of Political Economy and the History of Economic Ideas. Dominique Torre is Professor of Economics at the University of Nice Sophia- Antipolis and LEM-CNRS. His research interests includes the heterogeneity on markets (financial, electronic and labour) and history of economic thought. Elise Tosi is Professor of Economics at the Euro American Institute of Techno- logy (groupe CERAM) and a member of LEM-CNRS (Nice-Sophia Antipolis). Hans-Michael Trautwein is Professor of International Economics at the Uni- versity of Oldenburg, Germany. He has published many articles on inter- national economics and the history of economic thought. For example, he published, with Mauro Boianovsky, an article on ‘Wicksell, Cassel and the Idea of Involuntary Unemployment’, History of Political Economy, 35 (2003), 385–436. Carlo Zappia is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Siena, Italy. His research deals with the historical and methodological aspects of interaction in a complex environment. In particular, he is interested in the Austrian approach to the interaction among individual agents. He has pub- lished articles in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought and the History of Economic Ideas. Abdallah Zouache is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Jean Monnet, France. His research interest are the years of high theory espe- cially with regard to the confrontation between Keynes’s and Kayak’s ideas, the question of coordination, the history of macroeconomics, monetary policy rules and the new neoclassical synthesis. He has published several articles on the history of economic thought in the Louvain Economic Review and L’Actualité Economique. Preface
This collection of essays is the result of an international workshop organised by the CREUSET, the economics research centre of the University of Saint-Etienne, France, in March 2002 on the theme of the relationship between the Austrian and the Swedish Schools of economics. The idea of holding this workshop was con- ceived as an attempt to make explicit the array of analytical connections that exists between the leaders of these two traditions, connections that we had become aware of due to the internal seminars or informal discussions in our research department. Our research centre gives the history of thought a place of its own in the defi- nition of its research policy. Not only do we think that the history of economic analysis is a fascinating subject, but, as economists, we are also aware that we cannot escape our past. We have much to gain from analysing the way in which our predecessors came up with their ideas and theories. The workshop was an attempt to show that the ideas of Menger and Wicksell are still alive. From the end of the nineteenth century, the Austrian and Swedish traditions developed along similar lines. From the outset, these two traditions shared a common critical view with the expanding Walrasian paradigm, thereby creating for each new generation close connections between authors: between these Böhm-Bawerk, Mises and Wieser, on the one hand, and Wicksell on the other, and later on, between Hayek and the Stockholm School of the 1930s (especially Myrdal).
Overview of the book The contributions here have focused on an original topic, namely, the meeting of Austrian economics with Swedish economics (Leijonhufvud, Coyne and Boettke). Previously, Austrian economics has had a revival in different areas but this was not really the case as far as Swedish economics is concerned. We think that the great cross-fertilisation of ideas between both traditions (especially in the 1920s and the 1930s) is still valid today. It is our expectation that this book will pave Preface xvii the way for new developments aimed at a mutual enrichment of both traditions. In particular, one of our aims is to bring back into favour the crucial role of Swedish economists in the development of economic ideas and economic policies (Carlson and Jonung, Magnusson). This book offers the opportunity to discuss this common evolution and to emphasise the similarities and differences between both traditions on shared fundamental topics such as money and business cycle theory (Boianovsky, Trautwein, Bellet and Zouache, Torre and Tosi), capital theory (Jenn-Treyer, De Bornier, Gloria-Palermo and Palermo), the role of expectations (Zappia, Bellet and Durieu, Jacoud) and the nature of their methodology (Ege, Nadeau).
Acknowledgements The editors wish to thank all the participants in the workshop for their enthusi- asm and commitment to this challenge, in particular, Axel Leijonhufvud for his availability. We are also grateful to the members of the CREUSET organising staff, especially Sylvie Grenier, Lise Causse and Regine Bufferne. Acknowledgements are also due to the Regional Council of Rhône-Alpes and the local Council of Saint-Etienne Métropole for their assistance with the publica- tion of this volume. Michel Bellet Sandye Gloria-Palermo Abdallah Zouache
Part I The meeting of Austrian and Swedish economics
1 The metamorphoses of neoclassical economics Axel Leijonhufvud
Introduction Between the two world wars, there were still distinct traditions or ‘schools’ in economics. But interaction by correspondence and travel between the various centers of learning was increasing and there was a widespread expectation that the various traditions were merging into a unified international neoclassical discipline, perhaps even a science. With the exception, perhaps, of the relation- ship between the London School of Economics and Cambridge, there was in or around 1930, as yet little sense of controversial opposition between the various traditions but instead more of an appreciation of what they could learn from each other. In or around 1930, it would, moreover, have been a reasonable expectation that this unified international economics not only would incorporate the main teachings of the Austrian and the related Swedish traditions but also that it was likely to develop in directions defined by the work then being done by the younger generation of Austrians and Swedes. Everyone acknowledged that the Lausanne School had demonstrated better than anyone else how ‘everything depended upon everything else’ but it had little influence on the research actually being done in those years. Similarly, everyone had to know their Marshall but the Marshallian tradition was not the main source of the problems and questions that interested economists at that time. So what happened? The Stockholm School died out and today is largely forgot- ten. The Austrian School survived as a small minority, isolated and neglected by the mainstream, and devoted to the purification and preservation of uniquely Austrian tenets. Marshallian cost-curves kept a foothold in undergraduate text- books but hardly anyone did Marshallian research. All three ended up, as it were, ‘marginalized’. The standard answer to the question of what happened is that the Keynesian revolution won out over the Austrians and Swedes in macroeconomics and, I suppose, that the Hicks–Samuelson mathematization of theory in effect did the 4 Axel Leijonhufvud same in microeconomics. I have no objection to that answer except that it does not explain how or why this all came about.
The ‘great transformation’ of neoclassical economics My own interest in this question has a macroeconomic motivation in that I want to understand the developments in general economic theory that have eventually left us with the microfoundations of macroeconomics that were in force in the 1980s and 1990s. As I see it, the evolution of macroeconomics in the twentieth century has to a large extent been driven by a shift in the understanding of what would constitute appropriate microfoundations. This shift has occurred in several stages which, taken together, have wrought a ‘great transformation’ of neoclassical economics. It is perhaps best to make clear from the outset that I am not referring to the mathematization of neoclassical economics, since economists of an Austrian per- suasion often blame that for what they consider wrong with economics, and since the Stockholm School was at least skeptical about the usefulness of mathematical formalisms.1 But it is not the formalization of economic theory per se or the evo- lution of successive formalisms that are at stake. It is our understanding of what even the most elemental formalism means that has changed. If there is a methodo- logical lesson in the story that I will try to tell, it is not that we should refrain from formalizing economic theory but simply that being ‘rigorous’ in this particular way has not prevented a very drastic shift in how economists under- stand the core of neoclassical economics. I will not be able to trace all the stages in the ‘great transformation’ that I am talking about. Nor can I claim that ‘reasons of space’ are my only handicap. What follows should be understood as attempting a sweeping generalization to make sense of a long and complex historical process. It will have the deficiencies of all such sweeping generalizations. I must leave it to a later occasion – and most probably to other people – to document who, among earlier economists, it truly fits and to whose thought it does violence. I will proceed by first describing where we have ended up and then go back and attempt a sketch of where we started from. This should provide a firmer idea of what I mean when I refer to this transformation of understanding. Then, I will attempt to describe some of the stages of the process and to indicate at least how and why the Austrians and the Swedes decided not to ‘go along’ with the major- ity of our profession.
Turn of the century: modern microfoundations Optimality at individual and competitive equilibrium at aggregate levels are the hallmarks of modern theory. It is largely the meanings attached to ‘optimality’ or ‘maximization’, to ‘equilibrium’ and to ‘competition’ that will be our concern in Metamorphoses of economics 5 what follows. They are context-dependent and the conceptual context has not always been the same as the one in force in recent years. At the end of the century, the common understanding may be summarized as follows.
Individual agent level • Observed behavior is understood as the exercise of choice. • Choice is represented formally in terms of constrained optimization. • For the optimization problem to have a determinate solution, the agent has to know his opportunity set in all its dimensions (for example, all prices, present and future). • The solution is a plan. For the plan to explain observed behavior, the informa- tion defining the agent’s opportunity set must be objectively true. Uncer- tainty about the future can be present only in the form of objectively known stochastic distributions (also, of course, the agent must be able to calculate the optimum).
Market and system level • If this behavior description is to apply to all agents, the system must be represented as in equilibrium. If observed actions are to be interpreted as real- izations of optimal plans, the state of the system must be such that all plans are consistent with one another. • If all actions always have to be apprehended as part of objectively optimal plans, ‘disequilibrium’ is a meaningless term and ‘equilibrium’ is a super- fluous term. • In a temporal context, the economy is seen as following an intertemporal equi- librium trajectory, conceptually predetermined by the reconciliation of all individual plans. Agents have to know (the probability distributions of) future equilibrium prices in order to formulate their optimal plans. • This means that everyone’s choices have to be reconciled before anyone’s choice can be made. The process by which this reconciliation takes place cannot be described within the context of the model. • The logical contradiction can be avoided by assuming rational expectations, that is, it is supposed that past experience enables agents accurately to predict the stochastic distributions of future prices. The learning whereby agents distill rational expectations from experience cannot be described within the context of the model. • Further experience is worthless to agents. Shocks to the system never violate the probability distributions that agents take as known. Barreling down the intertemporal equilibrium path, no one learns anything they did not know to begin with. 6 Axel Leijonhufvud The present-day intertemporal competitive general equilibrium (ICGE) theory is the end-product of a gradual but profound change in our understanding of what neoclassical economics was all about. In the past few years, of course, there have been attempts to break out of this conception in macroeconomic models of learning and, in particular, in the theory of repeated games. Perhaps, there is now hope that this most recent focus on issues of learning and expectations formation will in effect revive the older con- ception of what neoclassical economics once entailed. But here I am concerned with the long transition from this early neoclassical economics to modern ICGE.
Founding fathers The economists of the British classical school (including Marx) sought to deduce the ‘laws of motion’ of the economy. In spirit, their doctrines were ‘magnificent dynamics’, as Baumol once characterized them. But they lacked, of course, the mathematical tools to formally analyze the dynamics of their system. Presuming (without proof) that the system must go to a point attractor, they were able to analyze its ‘dismal’ stationary state. The neoclassical system builders similarly conceived of both optima and equi- libria as steady-states of individual and collective adaptive processes respectively. This, I would argue, was what they all meant when they referred to the charac- teristic neoclassical constructions as static theory.
Individual agent level Early marginalist writers might explain, for example, that utility maximization of the consumer would require that the expression