DOCSLIB.ORG

The Business Cycle: Theories and Evidence

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Business Cycle: Theories and Evidence The Business Cycle: Theories and Evidence The Business Cycle: Theories and Evidence Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Economic Policy Conference ofthe Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis edited by Michael T. 8elongia Federal Reserve 8ank of St. Louis and Michelle R. Garfinkel Universityof California at Irvine ~. "Springer Science+8usiness Media, LLC Ubrary of Congress CataIoging-in-Publication Data Economic Pc>icy Conlerence of the Federal Reserve Bank 01 SI. Louis (16th: 1991: Federal Reserve Bank of SI. Louis) lhe business cycle: theories and evidence: proceedings 01 the Sixteenth Annual Economic Policy Conlerence 01 the Federal Reserve Bank of SI. Louis I edited by Michael T. Belongia and Michelle R. Garfinkel. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-94-010-5312-9 ISBN 978-94-011-2956-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-2956-5 1. Business cycles-United Slates-Congresses. 1. Belongia, MichaelT. II. Garfinkel, MichelleR., 1960- III. Title. HB3743.E24 1991 338.5' 42'0973-dc20 92-11616 CIP Copyright © 1992 Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 AII rights reserved. No pari of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system ar transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recarding, OI otherwise, without the prior written permission 01 the publisher,Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. Printed on ac;d-free pape,. Set in 1O/I2pt Times Roman by Graphicralt Typesetters Ud .. Hong Kong Contents Contributing Authors vii President's Message by Thomas C. Melzer ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xxi SESSION I 1 What Is a Business Cycle? 3 Victor Zarnowitz Commentary by James H. Stock 73 2 The Cycle Before New-Classical Economics 85 David Laidler Commentary by Ben S. Bernanke 113 SESSION II 119 3 For a Return to Pragmatism 121 Olivier Jean Blanchard v vi CONTENTS 4 The Cowles Commission Approach, Real Business Cycle Theories, and New-Keynesian Economics 133 RayC. Fair Commentary by Arnold Zellner 148 SESSION III 159 5 How Does It Matter? 161 Benjamin M. Friedman Commentary: Whatever Happened to Contracyclical Policy? 179 by Michael R. Darby CONFERENCE OVERVIEW 187 Commentary: Deja Vu All Over Again by Alan S. Blinder 189 Commentary: Business Cycle Developments and the Agenda for Business Cycle Research by Herschel f. Grossman 197 Commentary: Where Do We Stand? by Michael Parkin 202 Contributing Authors Ben S. Bernanke Herschel I. Grossman Princeton University Brown University Robertson Hall BoxB Princeton, NJ 08544-1013 Providence, RI 02912 David Laidler Olivier Jean Blanchard Department of Economics Department of Economics University of Western Ontario E52-391 Social Science Centre Massachusetts Institute of Technology London, Ontario N6A 5C2 Cambridge, MA 02139 Canada Michael Parkin Alan S. Blinder Department of Economics Department of Economics University of Western Ontario Princeton University Social Science Centre Princeton, NJ 08544-1021 London, Ontario N6A 5C2 Canada Michael R. Darby Andersen School of Management James H. Stock University of California Harvard University Los Angeles, CA 90024 79 John F. Kennedy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 RayC. Fair Victor Zarnowitz Yale University University of Chicago Cowles Foundation Graduate School of Business P.O. Box 2125 Yale Station 1101 East 58th Street New Haven, CT 06520-2125 Chicago, IL 60637 Arnold Zellner Benjamin M. Friedman University of Chicago Harvard University Graduate School of Business Littauer Center 127 11 01 East 58th Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Chicago, IL 60637 Vll President's Message Asking what we know about business cycles seems, in one sense, a curious topic for a conference of professional economists. After all, it is not as though the cycle is a new phenomenon. From the less well documented ups and downs of the colonial economy through the various booms and busts of the 1800s, the turbulent decade of the 1920s, and the nine complete cycles of the postwar period, the U.S. economy has had ample experience with sustained economic expansion followed by periods of decline. The sum total of this experience, however, has produced few firm conclusions about the "whys" or "hows" ofthe business cycle. To get a little perspective on the issue, I looked back to those days of the New Frontier when Walter Heller and Co. sat down "to the levers of control" as a Time magazine cover story described it. The first impression to catch my eye was the seeming harmony within the economics profession. Time asserted that "by broadening the areas of fact, the professionalization [of economics] has narrowed the areas of theory, of disagreement, and blurred old boundaries between liberals and conservatives." Indeed, the accepted wisdom of the day seemed to be that the cycle, though a bit of an annoyance, could be dealt with by the enlightened application of the appropriate mix of tax and budget policies. This state of affairs is in sharp contrast to the factional disputes that have dominated at least the last decade. This confidence was based, again according to the Time story, not on the insights of Keynes's General Theory but on Wesley Clair Mitchell's Business Cycles. This book, labeled as "the most important of all U.S. contributions to economics," and Mitchell's call for "a body of statistical information on how the economy actually behaves under the impact of various policies" were cited as key to transforming economics from "the IX x PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE dismal science" to one of optimism. The new generation of economists was the first to use econometric models to evaluate the effects of pulling on different policy levers. They genuinely believed that it was possible to "tinker successfully" with the economy and "do a lot more good than harm in the process." Kenneth Arrow summed up the prevailing view by claiming "you have to find a real crackpot to get an economist who doesn't accept the principle of government intervention in the business cycle." If this is what it means to be a crackpot, I know now why members of our staff here may have readily accepted the alternative designation, "maverick." They have argued, and I tend to agree, that the cycle is littered with all kinds of well­ intentioned policies that have had all sorts of important, deleterious, and quite unanticipated effects. The present time certainly is a different world from the confident optimism of the early 1960s. Moreover, the distinctions between liberal and conservative or activist and laissez faire economists, if they ever were blurred, now have widened to the point that splits among theories seem to preclude conversation between economists of different camps. This is why we chose to devote our conference this year to a discussion of the cycle. I cannot envision the quality of policy making moving forward until there is agreement on a common language and until a path to resolv­ ing conflicts among competing theories is identified. Exactly what is this cycle we are trying to explain? Precisely where do our theories differ? And, on what evidence can we defend the idea that we are doing more good than harm by activist meddling with market forces? Thirty years ago, in the same Time story I mentioned earlier, a panel of 17 economists were asked their views on the then-current recession and the prospects for recovery. Sixteen gave authoritative statements on when and why a recovery would begin. The seventeenth, John Kenneth Galbraith, said: "I do not believe anybody in this Administration makes the preten­ tious mistake of thinking he knows what is going to happen. One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know." I hope that these proceedings offer some guidance both on what we know, and on what we don't know, about business cycles. The former will tell us how far we have come in the past 30 years; the latter will remind us how much further we have yet to go. Thomas C. Melzer President Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Preface These proceedings, from a conference held at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on October 17-18, 1991, attempted to layout what we currently know about aggregate economic fluctuations. Identifying what we know inevitably reveals what we do not know about such fluctuations as well. From the vantage point of where the conference's participants view our current understanding to be, these proceedings can be seen as suggesting an agenda for further research. The conference was divided into five sections. It began with the formu­ lation of an empirical definition of the "business cycle" and a recitation of the stylized facts that must be explained by any theory that purports to capture the business cycle's essence. After outlining the historical develop­ ment and key features of the current "theories" of business cycles, the conference evaluated these theories on the basis of their ability to explain the facts. Included in this evaluation was a discussion of whether (and how) the competing theories could be distinguished empirically. The conference then examined the implications for policy of what is known and not known about business cycles. A panel discussion closed the conference, high­ lighting important unresolved theoretical and empirical issues that should be taken up in future business cycle research. What Is a Business Cycle? Before gaining a genuine understanding of business cycles, economists must agree and be clear about what they mean when they refer to the cycle. In the keynote chapter, "What Is a Business Cycle?" Victor Zarnowitz takes on the difficult task of defining a business cycle. Approaching this Xl xu PREFACE task from several perspectives, Zarnowitz argues that the business cycle is "pervasive." Although business cycles historically have differed in their duration and intensity, they are all generally characterized by a decline and contraction and a subsequent rise and expansion of aggregate economic activity, as measured by total employment, output, real income, and real expenditures.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries
    Estimating the e®ects of ¯scal policy in OECD countries Roberto Perotti¤ This version: November 2004 Abstract This paper studies the e®ects of ¯scal policy on GDP, in°ation and interest rates in 5 OECD countries, using a structural Vector Autoregression approach. Its main results can be summarized as follows: 1) The e®ects of ¯scal policy on GDP tend to be small: government spending multipliers larger than 1 can be estimated only in the US in the pre-1980 period. 2) There is no evidence that tax cuts work faster or more e®ectively than spending increases. 3) The e®ects of government spending shocks and tax cuts on GDP and its components have become substantially weaker over time; in the post-1980 period these e®ects are mostly negative, particularly on private investment. 4) Only in the post-1980 period is there evidence of positive e®ects of government spending on long interest rates. In fact, when the real interest rate is held constant in the impulse responses, much of the decline in the response of GDP in the post-1980 period in the US and UK disappears. 5) Under plausible values of its price elasticity, government spending typically has small e®ects on in°ation. 6) Both the decline in the variance of the ¯scal shocks and the change in their transmission mechanism contribute to the decline in the variance of GDP after 1980. ¤IGIER - Universitµa Bocconi and Centre for Economic Policy Research. I thank Alberto Alesina, Olivier Blanchard, Fabio Canova, Zvi Eckstein, Jon Faust, Carlo Favero, Jordi Gal¶³, Daniel Gros, Bruce Hansen, Fumio Hayashi, Ilian Mihov, Chris Sims, Jim Stock and Mark Watson for helpful comments and suggestions.
    [Show full text]
  • Ten Nobel Laureates Say the Bush
    Hundreds of economists across the nation agree. Henry Aaron, The Brookings Institution; Katharine Abraham, University of Maryland; Frank Ackerman, Global Development and Environment Institute; William James Adams, University of Michigan; Earl W. Adams, Allegheny College; Irma Adelman, University of California – Berkeley; Moshe Adler, Fiscal Policy Institute; Behrooz Afraslabi, Allegheny College; Randy Albelda, University of Massachusetts – Boston; Polly R. Allen, University of Connecticut; Gar Alperovitz, University of Maryland; Alice H. Amsden, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Robert M. Anderson, University of California; Ralph Andreano, University of Wisconsin; Laura M. Argys, University of Colorado – Denver; Robert K. Arnold, Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy; David Arsen, Michigan State University; Michael Ash, University of Massachusetts – Amherst; Alice Audie-Figueroa, International Union, UAW; Robert L. Axtell, The Brookings Institution; M.V. Lee Badgett, University of Massachusetts – Amherst; Ron Baiman, University of Illinois – Chicago; Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research; Drucilla K. Barker, Hollins University; David Barkin, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana – Unidad Xochimilco; William A. Barnett, University of Kansas and Washington University; Timothy J. Bartik, Upjohn Institute; Bradley W. Bateman, Grinnell College; Francis M. Bator, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government; Sandy Baum, Skidmore College; William J. Baumol, New York University; Randolph T. Beard, Auburn University; Michael Behr; Michael H. Belzer, Wayne State University; Arthur Benavie, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill; Peter Berg, Michigan State University; Alexandra Bernasek, Colorado State University; Michael A. Bernstein, University of California – San Diego; Jared Bernstein, Economic Policy Institute; Rari Bhandari, University of California – Berkeley; Melissa Binder, University of New Mexico; Peter Birckmayer, SUNY – Empire State College; L.
    [Show full text]
  • Janet L Yellen: the Federal Reserve's Monetary Policy Toolkit
    Janet L Yellen: The Federal Reserve’s monetary policy toolkit – past, present, and future Speech by Ms Janet L Yellen, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Economic Symposium “Designing resilient monetary policy frameworks for the future”, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 26 August 2016. * * * The Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession posed daunting new challenges for central banks around the world and spurred innovations in the design, implementation, and communication of monetary policy. With the U.S. economy now nearing the Federal Reserve’s statutory goals of maximum employment and price stability, this conference provides a timely opportunity to consider how the lessons we learned are likely to influence the conduct of monetary policy in the future. The theme of the conference, “Designing Resilient Monetary Policy Frameworks for the Future,” encompasses many aspects of monetary policy, from the nitty-gritty details of implementing policy in financial markets to broader questions about how policy affects the economy. Within the operational realm, key choices include the selection of policy instruments, the specific markets in which the central bank participates, and the size and structure of the central bank’s balance sheet. These topics are of great importance to the Federal Reserve. As noted in the minutes of last month’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, we are studying many issues related to policy implementation, research which ultimately will inform the FOMC’s views on how to most effectively conduct monetary policy in the years ahead. I expect that the work discussed at this conference will make valuable contributions to the understanding of many of these important issues.
    [Show full text]
  • Blanchard and Summers 1984 for the U.K., Germany and France; See Buiter 1985 for a More De- Tailed Study of U.K
    This PDF is a selection from an out-of-print volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research Volume Title: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1986, Volume 1 Volume Author/Editor: Stanley Fischer, editor Volume Publisher: MIT Press Volume ISBN: 0-262-06105-8 Volume URL: http://www.nber.org/books/fisc86-1 Publication Date: 1986 Chapter Title: Hysteresis and the European Unemployment Problem Chapter Author: Olivier J. Blanchard, Lawrence H. Summers Chapter URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c4245 Chapter pages in book: (p. 15 - 90) — Olivier I. Blanchard andLawrenceH. Summers MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND NBER, HARVARD UNWERSITY AND NBER Hysteresis and the European Unemployment Problem After twenty years of negligible unemployment, most of Western Europe has since the early 1970s suffered a protracted period of high and ris- ing unemployment. In the United Kingdom unemployment peaked at 3.3 percent over the period 1945—1970, but has risen almost continu- ously since 1970, and now stands at over 12 percent. For the Common Market nations as a whole, the unemployment rate more than doubled between 1970 and 1980 and has doubled again since then. Few forecasts call for a significant decline in unemployment over the next several years, and none call for its return to levels close to those that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s. These events are not easily accounted for by conventional classical or Keynesian macroeconomic theories. Rigidities associated with fixed- length contracts, or the costs of adjusting prices or quantities, are un- likely to be large enough to account for rising unemployment over periods of a decade or more.
    [Show full text]
  • Interview of Stanley Fischer by Olivier Blanchard
    UBRARIBS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Boston Library Consortium IVIember Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/interviewofstanlOOblan 2 DEWEY HB31 .M415 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Economics Working Paper Series Interview of Stanley Fischer By Olivier Blanchard Working Paper 05-1 April 1 9, 2005 Room E52-251 50 Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 021 42 This paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Networl< Paper Collection at http://ssrn.com/abstract=707821 MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY APR 2 6 2005 LIBRARIES Interview of Stanley Fischer, by Olivier Blanchard.i Abstract Stanley Fischer is a macroeconomist par excellence. After three careers, the first in academia at Chicago, and at MIT, the second at the World Bank and at the International Monetary Fund, the third in the private sector at Citigroup, he is starting a fourth, as the head of the Central Bank of Israel. This interview, to be published in Macroeconomic Dynamics, took place in April 2004, before the start of his fourth career. This interview took place long before Stan had any idea he would become Governor of the Bank of Israel, a position he took up in May 2005. We have not changed the text to reflect this latest stage. Introduction. The interview took place in April 2004 in my office at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City, where I was spending a sabbatical year. We completed it while running together in Central Park during the following weeks. Our meeting at Russell Sage was just like the many meetings we have had over the years.
    [Show full text]
  • CURRICULUM VITAE August, 2015
    CURRICULUM VITAE August, 2015 Robert James Shiller Current Position Sterling Professor of Economics Yale University Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics P.O. Box 208281 New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8281 Delivery Address Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics 30 Hillhouse Avenue, Room 11a New Haven, CT 06520 Home Address 201 Everit Street New Haven, CT 06511 Telephone 203-432-3708 Office 203-432-6167 Fax 203-787-2182 Home [email protected] E-mail http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller Home Page Date of Birth March 29, 1946, Detroit, Michigan Marital Status Married, two grown children Education 1967 B.A. University of Michigan 1968 S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1972 Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Employment Sterling Professor of Economics, Yale University, 2013- Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics, Yale University 2008-13 Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics Yale University 1989-2008 Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1982-, with joint appointment with Yale School of Management 2006-, Professor Adjunct of Law in semesters starting 2006 Visiting Professor, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1981-82. Professor of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, and Professor of Finance, The Wharton School, 1981-82. Visitor, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Visiting Scholar, Department of Economics, Harvard University, 1980-81. Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, 1974-81. 1 Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research, Research Center for Economics and Management Science, Cambridge; and Visiting Scholar, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1974-75. Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Minnesota, 1972-74.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Models and Probabilities in the Monetary Policy Process
    1017-01 BPEA/Sims 12/30/02 14:48 Page 1 CHRISTOPHER A. SIMS Princeton University The Role of Models and Probabilities in the Monetary Policy Process This is a paper on the way data relate to decisionmaking in central banks. One component of the paper is based on a series of interviews with staff members and a few policy committee members of four central banks: the Swedish Riksbank, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of England, and the U.S. Federal Reserve. These interviews focused on the policy process and sought to determine how forecasts were made, how uncertainty was characterized and handled, and what role formal economic models played in the process at each central bank. In each of the four central banks, “subjective” forecasting, based on data analysis by sectoral “experts,” plays an important role. At the Federal Reserve, a seventeen-year record of model-based forecasts can be com- pared with a longer record of subjective forecasts, and a second compo- nent of this paper is an analysis of these records. Two of the central banks—the Riksbank and the Bank of England— have explicit inflation-targeting policies that require them to set quantita- tive targets for inflation and to publish, several times a year, their forecasts of inflation. A third component of the paper discusses the effects of such a policy regime on the policy process and on the role of models within it. The large models in use in central banks today grew out of a first generation of large models that were thought to be founded on the statisti- cal theory of simultaneous-equations models.
    [Show full text]
  • Self-Control and Saving for Retirement
    DAVID I. LAIBSON Harvard University ANDREA REPETTO Universidad de Chile JEREMY TOBACMAN Harvard University Self-Control and Saving for Retirement In Lake Wobegone we believe in salting money away, not only as an investment but also to remove it as a temptation. Garrison Keillor' Some experts have called for easing penalties on early withdrawalsfrom savings plans, believing people will invest more if they know they can get their money if they need it. But most Americans appear wary of such changes, fearful of the temptation to raid their own nest eggs. Sixty percent of Americans say it is better to keep, rather than loosen, legal restrictions on retirementplans so that people don't use the moneyfor other things. Only 36 percent prefer to make it easier for people to tap such savings before their retirement. Public Agenda2 We thankGeorge Akerlof, ChristopherCarroll, Eric Engen, William Gale, Robert Hall, and James Poterbafor extremely helpful conversationsand advice. We are also grateful for the valuable input of Robert Barro, Steve Bergantino,Olivier Blanchard, JohnCampbell, Daniel Dulitzky, BenjaminFriedman, Drew Fudenberg,Ken Judd,John Shea, JonathanSkinner, David Wise, and Richard Zeckhauser, and participantsof seminarsat HarvardUniversity, StanfordUniversity, and the University of Maryland, and of the Brookings Panel meeting. Laibson acknowledgesfinancial support from the National Science Foundation, the MacArthurFoundation, and a National Bureau of Economic ResearchAging Fellowship;and Repetto, from an Alfred P. Sloan Graduate Fellowshin. 1. Quoted in Laura Pedersen-Pietersen,"From Lake Wobegone and Beyond, A RoundTable on Economics and Finance,'"NewYork Times, February8, 1998, p. C4. 2. Farkasand Johnson(1997, p. 28). 91 92 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1:1998 CONSUMERS FACE TWO challenges: making good decisions and sticking to them.
    [Show full text]
  • Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in Oecd Countries
    EUROPEAN NETWORK OF ECONOMIC POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTES WORKING PAPER NO. 15/OCTOBER 2002 ESTIMATING THE EFFECTS OF FISCAL POLICY IN OECD COUNTRIES ROBERTO PEROTTI CEPS Working Documents are published to give an indication of the work within CEPS’ various research programmes and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed are attributable only to the author in a personal capacity and not to any institution with which he is associated. ISBN 92-9079-402-X Available for free downloading from the CEPS website (http://www.ceps.be) Ó Copyright 2002, CEPS Place du Congrès 1 B-1000 Brussels Tel: (32.2) 229.39.11 Fax: (32.2) 219.41.51 VAT: BE 424.123.986 e-mail: [email protected] · website: http://www.enepri.org Estimating the effects of fiscal policy in OECD countries Roberto Perotti∗ First version: June 2002 This revision: September 2002 Abstract This paper studies the effects of fiscal policy on GDP, prices and interest rates in 5 OECD countries, using a structural Vector Autore- gression approach. Its main results can be summarized as follows: 1) The estimated effects of fiscal policy on GDP tend to be small: pos- itive government spending multipliers larger than 1 tend to be the exception; 2) The effects of fiscal policy on GDP and its components have become substantially weaker over time; 3) Under plausible values of the price elasticity, government spending has positive effects on the price level, although usually small; 4) Government spending shocks have significant effects on the nominal and real short interest rate, but of varying signs; 5) In the post-1980 period, net tax shocks have positive short run effects on the nominal interest rate, and typically negative or zero effects on prices; 6) The US is an outlier in many dimensions; responses to fiscal shocks estimated on US data are of- ten not representative of the average OECD country included in this sample.
    [Show full text]
  • Olivier Blanchard
    1 Olivier Blanchard’s maiden presentation to the Lisbon Academy of Science: an introduction Mr President, Ms Secretary General, Eminent Fellows It is a joy to welcome to this joint session of the two classes of the Lisbon Academy of Science, a foreign corresponding member of the L class proposed by the economics section, to give Olivier Blanchard a rather grand membership certificate, written in Latin, signed by President Artur Anselmo and Secretary General Maria Salomé Pais, and to introduce his maiden presentation on “where to from here?” I will first recall the process leading to his election, then offer a genealogy of his work on Portugal and close with some remarks about the person. Process As he enters this building for the first time, I would be remiss not to mention that Queen Maria I founded the Academy in 1779, upon a request from the duke of Lafões, just like King Louis XIII established the French Academy in 1636, upon a request from the Duke of Richelieu. Because the number of immortels is set at 40, the ritual of induction is far more elaborate there. To reflect French Republican identity I selected interdisciplinary snippets from three among the top 40 of over 700 [23, p. 22] with two eloges, Condorcet in 1782 and Tocqueville in 1842, and Siegfried’s 1947 reply. The mathematician’s criticism of slavery brings together the US and our founding Queen: “l’Américain, en rompant ses chaînes se mis en devoir de romper celles de ses esclaves ; et, de tous les peuples libres, il a le premier appelé tout ce qui cultivait la même terre aux mêmes droits et à la même liberté.
    [Show full text]
  • Inside the Economist's Mind: the History of Modern
    1 Inside the Economist’s Mind: The History of Modern Economic Thought, as Explained by Those Who Produced It Paul A. Samuelson and William A. Barnett (eds.) CONTENTS Foreword: Reflections on How Biographies of Individual Scholars Can Relate to a Science’s Biography Paul A. Samuelson Preface: An Overview of the Objectives and Contents of the Volume William A. Barnett History of Thought Introduction: Economists Talking with Economists, An Historian’s Perspective E. Roy Weintraub INTERVIEWS Chapter 1 An Interview with Wassily Leontief Interviewed by Duncan K. Foley Chapter 2 An Interview with David Cass Interviewed jointly by Steven E. Spear and Randall Wright Chapter 3 An Interview with Robert E. Lucas, Jr. Interviewed by Bennett T. McCallum Chapter 4 An Interview with Janos Kornai Interviewed by Olivier Blanchard Chapter 5 An Interview with Franco Modigliani Interviewed by William A. Barnett and Robert Solow Chapter 6 An Interview with Milton Friedman Interviewed by John B. Taylor Chapter 7 An Interview with Paul A. Samuelson Interviewed by William A. Barnett Chapter 8 An Interview with Paul A. Volcker Interviewed by Perry Mehrling 2 Chapter 9 An Interview with Martin Feldstein Interviewed by James M. Poterba Chapter 10 An Interview with Christopher A. Sims Interviewed by Lars Peter Hansen Chapter 11 An Interview with Robert J. Shiller Interviewed by John Y. Campbell Chapter 12 An Interview with Stanley Fischer Interviewed by Olivier Blanchard Chapter 13 From Uncertainty to Macroeconomics and Back: An Interview with Jacques Drèze Interviewed by Pierre Dehez and Omar Licandro Chapter 14 An Interview with Tom J. Sargent Interviewed by George W.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Olivier Blanchard's Maiden Presentation to the Lisbon Academy
    1 Olivier Blanchard’s maiden presentation to the Lisbon Academy of Science: an introduction Mr President, Ms Secretary General, Eminent Fellows It is a joy to welcome to this joint session of the two classes of the Lisbon Academy of Science, a foreign corresponding member of the L class proposed by the economics section, to give Olivier Blanchard a rather grand membership certificate, written in Latin, signed by President Artur Anselmo and Secretary General Maria Salomé, and to introduce his maiden presentation on where do we go from here?. I will first recall the process leading to his election, then offer a genealogy of his work on Portugal and close with some remarks about the person. Process As he enters this building for the first time, I would be remiss not to mention that Queen Maria I founded the Academy in 1779, upon a request from the duke of Lafões, just like King Louis XIII established the French Academy in 1636, upon a request from the Duke of Richelieu. Because the number of immortels is set at 40, the ritual of induction is far more elaborate there. To reflect French Republican identity I selected interdisciplinary snippets from three among the top 40 of over 700 [23, p. 22] with two eloges (Condorcet, 1782 and Tocqueville, 1842) and Siegfried’s reply (1947). The mathematician’s criticism of slavery brings together the US and our founder: “l’Américain, en rompant ses chaînes se mis en devoir de romper celles de ses esclaves ; et, de tous les peuples libres, il a le premier appelé tout ce qui cultivait la même terre aux mêmes droits et à la même liberté.
    [Show full text]