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Fri Mar 31 17:18:38 2006 |
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==================== HES POSTING =====================
The winner of the 1997 Dorfman Dissertation Award is Daniele Besomi, for
his dissertation "The Making of Harrod's Dynamics," completed under the
supervision of John Presley at Loughborough University. The award was
announced at the HES annual meeting in Charleston, South Carolina.
Information about the Dorfman prize and a list of the winners can be found
at: http://www.eh.net/~HisEcSoc/Society/dorfman_award.shtml
Daniele kindly provided me with the following abstract of his
dissertation:
THE MAKING OF HARROD'S DYNAMICS
This study is an inquiry into the origin and early development of
Harrod's notion of 'economic dynamics'. On the one hand, it examines how
Harrod gathered the components of his theory, thus making it a study in
chronology. The organizing concept is the instability principle, which
responded to Harrod's pre-analytical postulate that some sort of
destabiliser must be introduced at the outset in order to make a theory of
the cycle possible. The method of analysis presupposed the distinction
between the problems of determining the level and the variations in the
level of activity, the first being logically prior to the second, while the
analytical instruments giving voice to both principles were the accelerator
and the multiplier.
On the other hand, this research examines the relationship of
Harrod's dynamics with the 'orthodox theory' and with the alternative
approaches to dynamics. The point of contact with orthodoxy was the method
of analysis, which Harrod generalised from the partial equilibrium
approach. The point of detachment was the instability principle, which
Harrod saw as a rejection of the traditional assumption of the stability of
equilibrium. This also differentiated his approach from the "time-lag
theories of the cycle": in Harrod's interpretation, the econometricians'
notion of dynamics (but also Robertson's, Hicks's and Lundberg's) saw the
presence of time lags as the cause of the cycle, which Harrod thought
instead to lie in the instability of equilibrium.
Daniele Besomi
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