I need to get Tyler Goodspeed's book Rethinking the Keynesian Revolution: Keynes, Hayek, and the Wicksell Connection (HT Peter Klein).
Goodspeed highlights the "Wicksell connection" between the two, which is precisely what I've been trying to say in several recent posts as well:
"While standard accounts of the 1930s debates
surrounding economic thought pit John Maynard Keynes against Friedrich
von Hayek in a clash of ideology, this reflexive dichotomy is in many
respects superficial. It is the argument of this book that both Keynes
and Hayek developed their respective theories of the business cycle
within the tradition of Swedish economist Knut Wicksell, and that this
shared genealogy manifested itself in significant theoretical affinities
between the two supposed antagonists. The salient features of
Wicksell's work, namely the importance of money, the role of
uncertainty, coordination failures, and the element of time in capital
accumulation, all motivated the Keynesian and Hayekian theories of
economic fluctuations. They also contributed to a fundamental
convergence between the two economists during the 1930s. This shared,
"Wicksellian" vision of economic problems points to a very different
research agenda from that of the Walrasian-style, general equilibrium
analysis that has dominated postwar macroeconomics."
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
I think you might find this Phd thesis interesting in that case:
ReplyDeletehttp://mises.org/document/3195/Interpretations-of-the-Wicksellian-Idea
Thanks very much. This looks great.
DeleteIs that the same Robert L. Bradley Jr. as this one? It seems so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Bradley,_Jr.
DeleteI think it is... Holy cow, according to Wikipedia the chair of his dissertation committee was Rothbard.
Delete@Daniel, I just want to say as well something that has always somewhat troubled me with versions of the ABCT is the extent to which they rely on a concept of the "natural" or neutral interest rate. I don't know if you like Frank Shostak, but I think he gives some insightful comments about the problems with this concept and how it cannot really be reconciled in light of Mises' calculation problem. The talk is here (love the guy's accent!):
http://mises.org/media/1345/The-Myth-of-Neutral-Interest-Rate-Policy
i agree on the "importance of money" and the "element of time in capital accumulation" as salient features of wicksell's work. but where does he mention "the role of uncertainty" and "coordination failures" in his work??
ReplyDeletePD: i'm most familiar with 'nterest and prices' and volume 2 of the Lectures. do those ideas feature in others of his works?
I'm no Wicksell expert, so I couldn't say. I have been thinking about it in much more general terms about a cumulative process that sets in when the interest rate departs from the natural rate. I'm proposing (and Goodspeed seems to agree) a genealogical connection between the three. I can't help you on the technicalities of Wicksellian theory.
DeleteI haven't read all of the book, but I'd guess "the role of uncertainty" and "coordination failures" were just added as part of the editor's blurb, as Goodspeed himself doesn't argue that those are "salient features" of Wicksell. Though he does suggest that Wicksell's work opens the door to those considerations.
DeleteWhile I've heard of it before Daniel (and neglected to tell you about it), Goodspeed's book seems like a good book, and it seems that the history of economic thought is getting into something of a miniature renaissance.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I've heard that the Stockholm School (of which Knut Wicksell himself was a major figure) doesn't explicitly take expectations into account, nor does it make explicit the distinction between risk versus ambiguity/uncertainty. This is according to Dr. Michael Emmett Brady...see the following review and the comments section of it.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2I10P8FTA8I7G/
In any case, I need to get around to reading Knut Wicksell. J.M. Keynes did name Wicksell as one of his "great-grandparents in errancy".
I believe that Chapter 3 of The Hayek-Keynes Debate by Cochran and Glahe deals with the Wicksell connection between Hayek and Keynes.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, there's Leijenhuvfud's classic paper on the Wicksell connection (which I'm sure Daniel already knows, but others might not: http://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/uclawp/165.html )
ReplyDelete