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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Economics

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

1991

Economic thought

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

English Translation, Yale University Press, James Tobin Oct 1991

English Translation, Yale University Press, James Tobin

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Eduard Marz’s book was first published in German in 1983. I have read only his English translation, which he had completed with preliminary revisions, though not alas with final polishing, before his death in 1987. The book illuminates for us who knew him in America the intellectual and personal background of this fascinating immigrant. And not just for us, of course. World events and intellectual developments over the past two decades have heightened interest in Schumpeter not only among economists, but also among our social scientists and political philosophers. Indeed many people of all ages and all walks of life …


Commentary On Irving Fisher, James Tobin Oct 1991

Commentary On Irving Fisher, James Tobin

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Schumpeter regarded “The Nature of Capital and Income” as one of the three of Fisher’s contributions to general theory generally recognized, at the time Schumpeter was writing, as “of first-class importance and originality.” The other two were Fisher’s “Mathematical Investigations” (1982) and his statistical method for measuring the marginal utility of income (1972). Nature is the bridge, both in sequence and in logic, between the other two great works, the timeless general equilibrium theory of the 1892 dissertation and the extension of that theory to intertemporal choices in production and consumption in the theory of interest.


The Invisible Hand In Modern Macroeconomics, James Tobin Jan 1991

The Invisible Hand In Modern Macroeconomics, James Tobin

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The Invisible Hand, one of the Great Ideas of history and one of the most influential, is Adam Smith’s most important legacy to macroeconomics, as to all economics. It is particularly important today as the ultimate inspiration for the New Classical Macroeconomics and for Real Business Cycle Theory. These are intellectual movements that engage many of the best brains in the profession, especially among younger cohorts and especially in the United States. They dominate the agenda even of theorists and econometricians who are skeptical or hostile to their methods and conclusions.