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CALL FOR PAPERS
2005 Duke HOPE Conference
Agreement on Demand:
The History of 20th Century Demand Theory
Philip Mirowski and D. Wade Hands
April 22-24, 2005 Duke University
While many broad statements have been made concerning the nature and causes
of the transformation of the microeconomic orthodoxy in America in WWII and
after by the participants, there has been very little work by historians
evaluating their generalizations and proposing their own narratives. The
purpose of this conference is to redirect the skills, attention and
competencies of some intellectual historians and some historically-inclined
economists to explore the trajectory of a (probably the) key component of
neoclassical microeconomics, viz., demand theory, primarily but not
exclusively of the American variety, from roughly the 1930s through to the
end of the century. While this implicitly selects the Walrasian general
equilibrium tradition and Nash game theory as primary foci of attention at
the conference, we shall seek to pose a number of questions about the
orthodoxy that would transcend the few existing accounts that treat those
developments as obvious extrapolations of pre-1930s neoclassical price
theory. It seems now accepted that only in the central decades of the 20th
century did economists stabilize their referents to the theory of demand.
These questions would include the following: How significant in practice
was the role of the Walrasian tradition (versus, say, the Marshallian) in
the rise of the American orthodoxy in demand theory? How did the boundaries
of 'the market' and hence the subject matter of economics come to be
platted so distinctively in the US and elsewhere? To what extent was the
"Law of Demand" held to be an explicitly neoclassical proposition? How
should one understand the frequent repudiations of psychology throughout
the period? How did the actual process of exchange become downplayed, and
later revived? How did a program subscribing to the centrality of the
individual come to endorse a generic undifferentiated conception of agency?
What was the significance of the shift of the governing image of the market
to that of an information processor?
While these tend to be quasi-philosophical questions, we are also looking
for detailed historical investigations into topics like:
Was there a distinctive tradition at mid-century of price theory at
Chicago, MIT, Cowles and elsewhere? What happened to them?
What were the implications of the Sonnenschein/Mantel/Debreu theorems, the
no-trade theorems, the Scarf counterexample, and other 'anomalies'
generated within the period?
What were the reactions to 'rationality-free' attempts to provide
alternative grounding for the law of demand, such as efforts by Gary
Becker, Werner Hildenbrand, William Starbuck, Alan Kirman, and others?
Did the various attempts at large-scale structural econometric estimation
of demand systems erode support for the program?
Was the mid-century Walrasian orthodoxy more concerned with 'equilibrium'
than with the process aspects of exchange, and did developments like the
'microstructure' literature in finance or the Smithian program within
experimental economics serve to change this?
What happened to research agendas in demand theory such as the 'atomless
agents' approach, the mechanism design literature, the Carnegie simulation
approach, and others? To what extent did these programs or others tend to
alter the notion of 'agency'?
Has the modern movement to produce 'designer markets' (FCC auctions,
specialized e-commerce markets, emissions trading) altered the
configuration of demand theory?
Was the 'Ordinal Revolution' really so very revolutionary? How did the
vicissitudes of 'welfare economics' feed back on the evolution of demand
theory?
To what extent did the "consistency revolution" associated with the
revealed preference theory of Samuelson and others constitute a revolution
in demand theory?
What effect did the American neoclassical orthodoxy have upon indigenous
schools of demand theory in other countries?
The purpose of this conference is to convene interested parties who possess
a dual commitment to work through the history of some technical issues, but
also a willingness to discuss the larger implications of these developments
both for economists and their clientele.
The conference will take place at Duke University, Durham, NC, on April
22-24. Proposals for papers (1000 words maximum) should be sent to both the
organizers (contact information below). Papers will be selected and authors
notified by September 30, 2004. In keeping with the Duke tradition, all
conference sessions are plenary and presentations will be limited in number
and allotted time to allow for maximum discussion. Papers will be
circulated in advance, and therefore drafts must be delivered to the
organizers no later than March 1, 2005. Following the conference, papers
will be selected and refereed for inclusion in a special supplement to
History of Political Economy, published in hardcover volume by Duke
University Press. Participation in the conference entails conceding first
refusal rights for publication to the editors and HOPE.
For further information, or to submit a proposal, please contact Philip
Mirowski, 400 Decio Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
46554, tel. 574-631-7580 (email [log in to unmask] ) and D. Wade Hands,
Department of Economics, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, 98416,
253-879-3592 (email [log in to unmask]).
D. Wade Hands
University of Puget Sound
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