Re: Phil Mirowski
- Original Message - From: "michael perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 9:07 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20630] Phil Mirowski > I regard Phil Mirowski as one of the most creative economists in the > world outside of pen-l. I am waiting for his new book, Machine Dreams, > to arrive in the mail. > > Here is a new article by him > > http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_12/mirowski/index.html > > I have not had time to read it, but if it is up to is usual standards, > it should be very good. > -- == And they wonder why Microsoft employees and profs. and grad students, along with all the other citizens from around the world shut down the WTO Ian
Phil Mirowski
I regard Phil Mirowski as one of the most creative economists in the world outside of pen-l. I am waiting for his new book, Machine Dreams, to arrive in the mail. Here is a new article by him http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_12/mirowski/index.html I have not had time to read it, but if it is up to is usual standards, it should be very good. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Phil Mirowski
Well, I think this is unfair to Schweickart, who is more Keynsian than NCE in his own economics. My own defene of MS is based on a modified Austrian conceptionof markets, not on a NCE one. --jks In a message dated Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:45:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << What I think should be recognized is that almost all the debate, pro and con re market socialism has been couched in neoclassical terms. (Indeed, if you look at my review of Jossa and Cuomo in ROPE, that is my first comment.) But the debate on MS is in NC terms because the whole debate back to Barone has been in nc/GE terms. That is why it fitted into the AM framework of Roemer. It is also the reason why I like Horvat because, although he sometimes argued using a NC framework, he by and large rejected the NC model of a (market) socialism system and argued it on much more instituational/marxist grounds. (That is why I like the PE of Socialism so much). Vanek, as much as I respect his work, is also thoroughly grounded in NC -- indeed all the assumptions of the Ward-Vanek-Domar model are neoclassical. Horvat, on numerous occassions, pointed out that (in Yugoslavia) people just didn't behave that way and the empirical results contradicted the neoclassical model. This criticism was directed as much at the Austrian nonsense as it was at the neoclassical critique. What bothers me about the pro market socialist views of Vanek, Schweikart, Jossa and Cuomo, and the later views of Lange, is that they are all founded in the fundamental belief in NC economics. The central planners are the worst because their views are founded not only on NC assumptions but on GE which, given the capital controversy, is nonsense. (By the way, if you are willing to accept the NC framework, Jossa and Cuomo prove quite rigourously that MS is superior to capitalism and central planning. But that is not the point I want to make.) Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Date sent: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 18:02:55 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject:[PEN-L:22060] Re: Phil Mirowski Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > At 04:42 PM 07/19/2000 -0700, you wrote: > > Oskar Lange by 1938 he was the prime defender of planning in the > > socialist calculation debate, an early interpreter of Keynesianism, and a > > Marxist. His initial impact on the Chicago scene was to polarize > > conceptions of formal economics in even starker terms than one might find > > elsewhere. In the minds of many at Chicago, Walrasian mathematical theory > > became conflated with socialism, crude numerical empiricism, and > > politically nave welfare economics. > > wasn't Walras himself some sort of vague, technocratic, socialist? > > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine > >>
Re: Re: Phil Mirowski
What I think should be recognized is that almost all the debate, pro and con re market socialism has been couched in neoclassical terms. (Indeed, if you look at my review of Jossa and Cuomo in ROPE, that is my first comment.) But the debate on MS is in NC terms because the whole debate back to Barone has been in nc/GE terms. That is why it fitted into the AM framework of Roemer. It is also the reason why I like Horvat because, although he sometimes argued using a NC framework, he by and large rejected the NC model of a (market) socialism system and argued it on much more instituational/marxist grounds. (That is why I like the PE of Socialism so much). Vanek, as much as I respect his work, is also thoroughly grounded in NC -- indeed all the assumptions of the Ward-Vanek-Domar model are neoclassical. Horvat, on numerous occassions, pointed out that (in Yugoslavia) people just didn't behave that way and the empirical results contradicted the neoclassical model. This criticism was directed as much at the Austrian nonsense as it was at the neoclassical critique. What bothers me about the pro market socialist views of Vanek, Schweikart, Jossa and Cuomo, and the later views of Lange, is that they are all founded in the fundamental belief in NC economics. The central planners are the worst because their views are founded not only on NC assumptions but on GE which, given the capital controversy, is nonsense. (By the way, if you are willing to accept the NC framework, Jossa and Cuomo prove quite rigourously that MS is superior to capitalism and central planning. But that is not the point I want to make.) Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Date sent: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 18:02:55 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject:[PEN-L:22060] Re: Phil Mirowski Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > At 04:42 PM 07/19/2000 -0700, you wrote: > > Oskar Lange by 1938 he was the prime defender of planning in the > > socialist calculation debate, an early interpreter of Keynesianism, and a > > Marxist. His initial impact on the Chicago scene was to polarize > > conceptions of formal economics in even starker terms than one might find > > elsewhere. In the minds of many at Chicago, Walrasian mathematical theory > > became conflated with socialism, crude numerical empiricism, and > > politically nave welfare economics. > > wasn't Walras himself some sort of vague, technocratic, socialist? > > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine >
Re: Re: Phil Mirowski
In a message dated 7/20/00 9:09:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << wasn't Walras himself some sort of vague, technocratic, socialist? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine >> Yes. Not vague, either. He thought that Walrasian economics would help run the economy to promote the workers' well being. He was no laissez-faire ideologue, either. --jks
Re: Re: Phil Mirowski
He was closer to a Henry George type, wanting to nationalize landholdings. I don't think that he did much with that idea as he matured and got famous. - Jim Devine wrote: > At 04:42 PM 07/19/2000 -0700, you wrote: > > Oskar Lange by 1938 he was the prime defender of planning in the > > socialist calculation debate, an early interpreter of Keynesianism, and a > > Marxist. His initial impact on the Chicago scene was to polarize > > conceptions of formal economics in even starker terms than one might find > > elsewhere. In the minds of many at Chicago, Walrasian mathematical theory > > became conflated with socialism, crude numerical empiricism, and > > politically nave welfare economics. > > wasn't Walras himself some sort of vague, technocratic, socialist? > > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Phil Mirowski
At 04:42 PM 07/19/2000 -0700, you wrote: > Oskar Lange by 1938 he was the prime defender of planning in the > socialist calculation debate, an early interpreter of Keynesianism, and a > Marxist. His initial impact on the Chicago scene was to polarize > conceptions of formal economics in even starker terms than one might find > elsewhere. In the minds of many at Chicago, Walrasian mathematical theory > became conflated with socialism, crude numerical empiricism, and > politically nave welfare economics. wasn't Walras himself some sort of vague, technocratic, socialist? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Phil Mirowski
Some of you may know that I'm a great admirer of the work of Phil Mirowsky, notwithstanding his incorrect critique of the labor. Yesterday I posted something from this article regarding Lange. Here are some more notes about the article. I think it's a devastating critique of microeconomics. I didn't describe how Samuelson's attempt to salvage the thing failed in my notes. Mirowski, Philip and D. Wade Hands. 1998. "A Paradox of Budgets: The Postwar Stabilization of American Neoclassical Demand Theory." in From Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Neoclassicism, eds. Morgan Mary S. and Malcolm Rutherford. Annual Supplement to Volume 30. History of Political Economy (Durham: Duke University Press): pp. 260-92. 263: Hotelling hoped to be able to use mathematical theory to be able to solve the problems of the great Depression. In 1932, he published an article in the Journal of Political Economy regarding the Edgeworth taxation paradox, which showed that the imposition of a tax on a particular good could actually lower both its price and the price of a related good. It seemed to offer a serious challenge to the theory of demand. 267-8: "The pivotal figure in this wartime regime was Oskar Lange. Joining the department in 1938, he quickly found himself the senior advocate of the Walrasian approach to price theory and the sole local partisan of econometrics. It is not irrelevant to our story that by 1938 he was the prime defender of planning in the socialist calculation debate, an early interpreter of Keynesianism, and a Marxist. His initial impact on the Chicago scene was to polarize conceptions of formal economics in even starker terms than one might find elsewhere. In the minds of many at Chicago, Walrasian mathematical theory became conflated with socialism, crude numerical empiricism, and politically nave welfare economics. Knight assumed proprietary rights over graduate price theory during the latter part of the war, but it was Lange who taught John Hicks's Value and Capital. As Patinkin (1995, 372) notes, "it was the socialist Oskar Lange who extolled the beauties of the Paretian optimum achieved by a perfectly competitive market." Patinkin, Donald. 1995. The Training of an Economist. Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, 48: pp. 359-95. 276-7: The Cowles foundation attempted to get funding from the Rockefeller foundation. The institutionalists at the National Bureau of Economic Research helped to prevent the funding, creating bad blood, which later led to the measurement without theory controversy. 270: Frank Knight feared that going too far with price theory was dangerous. Considerations of the income effect would open up the door to Keynes's General Theory. 270: Milton Friedman, following Frank Knight, took the position that the demand curve was the central part of economics there was no need to go beyond the demand curve and deal with the complexities of utility and trying to sort out income effects from substitution effects. 280: They argue that the Cowles foundation moved in the direction of Keynesian macroeconomic because two and three equation change in models were much more amenable to structural estimation than full-blown Walrasian systems. 280: "The forging of the unholy alliance between Slutsky and Keynes at Cowles was of course Knight's worst nightmare, and it was Friedman who took it upon himself to carry the war back home to the commission. Friedman felt that the entire Cowles program of structural estimation was a vast waste of time. Time and time again, he told Marschak and Koopmans to their faces that their intricate statistical procedures failed to solve any real scientific problems. Friedman admitted later: "I was a major critic of the kind of thing they were doing in Chicago. I introduced the idea of testing their work against naive models, nave hypotheses, and so on. So I was very unsympathetic to Koopmans from the beginning. Hammond, J. Daniel. 1993. "An Interview with Milton Friedman." In Philosophy and Methodology of Economics. Vol. 1. ed. B. J. Caldwell (Aldershot: Edward Elgar): p. 231. 281: Samuelson rejected the econometric methods of Shultz and the Cowles foundation as well as the a priori analysis of Frank Knight and the Chicago school. In 1938, he attempted to create his preferred approach of revealed preference. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
