Dear all,
A new year, another set of anniversaries. Here is what I managed to dig up
over the holidays:
400 years ago, Italian merchant Bernardo Davanzati (1529-1606) died. In
his "Lezione delle Monete" (1588), Davanzati not only "resolved the
water/diamond paradox before it had even been perceived" (Niehans 1990),
he also improved Bodin's formulation of the quantity theory of money.
350 years ago, English politician and public servant Charles Davenant
(1656-1714) was born. Davenant was a foremost expert on public finance
(e.g., Discourses on the Publick Revenues and on the Trade of England,
1698) and an early exponent of what he called "the art of reasoning by
figures upon things relating to government" (i.e., Political Arithmetic or
quantitative economics).
250 years ago, Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) published his first piece in
economics, namely the article "Fermiers" published in the French
Encyclopedie (1756). In the same year William Godwin (1756-1836) was born.
Goodwin, usually described as a philosophical anarchist, was the principal
prophet of progress with whom Malthus took issue in his Essay on the
Principle of Population.
200 years ago, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and Michel Chevalier
(1806-1879) were born. While Mill does not need to be introduced, Michel
Chevalier probably does, even though during his life-time he was a
well-known economist and leader of the French liberal School. He is also
the Chevalier of the Cobden-Chevalier commercial treaty between England
and France of 1860, which led to a substantial reduction in tariffs and
encouraged series of other (quasi-) free-trade treaties in Europe.
150 years ago, Thomas Tooke (1774-1858), leader of the banking school,
published his attack "On the Bank Charter Act of 1844" (1856), which
separated the banking and currency functions of the Bank of England and
restricted its note issue in accordance with the proposals of the currency
school. During the same year, an early proponent of managed paper money,
Thomas Attwood (1783-1856) died. This was also the year Etienne Cabet
(1788-1856), the French utopian socialist and founder of the Icarian
movement, died.
100 years ago, Wassily W. Leontief (1906-1999) and Nicholas
Georgescu-Roegen (1906-1994) were born, and Rudolf Auspitz (1837-1906)
died (the Austrian mathematical economist and politician whose
"Untersuchungen ueber die Theorie des Preises" (with Richard Lieben)
influenced Pareto, Edgeworth and Fisher). As to important centennial
publications: Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) published his "Manuale di
economia politica," Knut Wicksell (1851-1926) published the second volume
of his "Lectures on Political Economy" (on money and credit) and Irving
Fisher clarified "The Nature of Capital and Income."
50 years ago, 1956, was not only the year Elvis landed his first Number 1
hit, it was also a year in which many seeds for controversy and new
developments were sown in economics. Take for instance capital and growth
theory: It was in 1956, that Joan Robinson (1903-1983) published her views
about "The Accumulation of Capital" and Nicholas Kaldor (1908-1986) his
"Alternative Theories of Distribution" (Review of Economic Studies 23),
while in the same year Robert Solow published "A contribution to the
theory of economic growth" (QJE 70).
Or take monetary theory: It was in 1956 that Don Patinkin (1922-1995)
published his influential "Money, Interest, and Prices: An Integration of
Monetary and Value Theory," the same year Milton Friedman initiated a
counterrevolution in monetary theory with his restatement of the quantity
theory ("The Quantity Theory of Money - a Restatement," which was the
introduction to the "Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money," a product
of his Workshop in Money and Banking at Chicago).
Meanwhile, also in 1956, Sidney Weintraub (1914-1983) made an early
suggestion for a macro-microfoundation in "A Macroeconomic Approach to the
Theory of Wages (AER 46), Herbert Simon proposed a different approach to
decision-making in "Rational choice and the structure of the environment?
(Psychological Review 63), Richard Lipsey and Kelvin Lancaster introduced
"The General Theory of Second Best" (Review of Economic Studies), John R.
Hicks (1904-1989) offered "A Revision of Demand Theory" (1956), Jan
Tinbergen (1903-1994) published "Economic Policy: Principles and Design,"
Thomas C. Schelling published "An essay on bargaining" (AER 46), and
Walter Isard revived the economics of location in his "Location and Space
Economy." 1956 was also the year that business cycle theorist Albert
Aftalion (1874-1956) died.
Finally, 25 years ago, James Tobin (1918-2002) was awarded the 1981 Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his analysis of financial markets,
while Stiglitz and Weiss published "Credit Rationing in Markets with
Imperfect Information" (AER 71). Clive W.J. Granger explained "Some
properties of time series data and their use in econometric model
specification" (Journal of Econometrics), Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993) put
forward his "Evolutionary Economics," Amartya Sen published an essay on
"Poverty and Famines," and Arthur Okun's "Prices and Quantities: A
Macroeconomic Analysis" was published posthumously.
Feel free to point out errors and omissions, and a Happy New Year to all
of you.
Thomas Moser
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