On the subject of moral sentiments, recently I was reading Gunnar Myrdal's American Dilemman, where he stated that economists risk limiting their usefulness by attempting to look at economic phenomena in isolation from the moral and political.  (I spent an hour trying to find the precise quote, and I cannot).  I've been mulling that over, as he seemed quite correct to me.
 
Re R. Sandilands unexpected post, I read it and bought your book about Currie, so maybe it was worth posting.  
 
Marie Christine Duggan
Keene State College, Keene, NH
 
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From: Societies for the History of Economics on behalf of Roger Sandilands
Sent: Sat 6/8/2013 7:29 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SHOE] moral sentiments



Mason: Lionel Robbins was one of the most egregious offenders in this regard. He opposed Pigou (I think it was) on progressive taxation on the grounds that it was impossible to make interpersonal comparisons of utility and so one could not argue that a dollar to a millionaire is not worth as much as it is to a pauper. Unscientific, you see. Currie, who knew him at the LSE, 1922-25, once suggested I write my PhD on "The errors of Lionel Robbins". Sadly, Robbins succeeded Young to a chair at the LSE after Young's untimely death in 1929.

CheeRS
   By the way, when you see Larry Boland you might ask him what he made of Currie. They were colleagues and on his part Currie respected Larry. I think Zane and Larry were wary of each other. I met up with one of Larry's best students last year in Cambridge - Stan Wong, though Stan left academia and economics to be a hot-shot lawyer advising world-wide on regulation policy.
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From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of mason gaffney [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, June 08, 2013 10:00 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] OUP series

Roger Sandilands' excerpts from A.O. Hirschman dust off some old memories
that help me understand why I never took Hirschman seriously. Could we call
him a pioneer of "Freakonomics"? Now I look forward to defenses from the
Hirschman champions who came forth in large numbers to tell us he was one of
the greats.

Re "morality", I've never heard or seen anyone dismiss Adam Smith on the
grounds that he wrote about moral sentiments. Pareto and his fans have, it
is true, dismissed progressively graduated income taxes, and estate and
property taxes, on the grounds that moral sentiments are just subjective. A
few on this list might even agree, but if so, let them please come out with
it explicitly - it's worth an open dialogue.

Mason Gaffney

-----Original Message-----
From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Roger Sandilands
Sent: Saturday, June 08, 2013 6:41 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] OUP series

Fidel objects to my "ideological motives" in criticising Raul Prebisch's
protectionism; and Ana Maria objects to my writing 'immoral' in connection
to Albert Hirschman's "principle of the hiding hand" in favour of industrial
protectionism. She says such words are inappropriate for a historian of
thought.


I actually wrote, "to my mind immoral". Note that we all have value
judgements; the only difference is in whether we make them explicit. I made
mine explicit, but I'd like to know on what good grounds - moral or
otherwise - an economist can justify the "hiding hand" principle.


Hirschman urges planners to conceal the true risks of their own pet projects
that would not otherwise be approved, or to urge private investors (risking
their money, not Hirschman's nor that of the planners he is advising). He
then explicitly supports this by invoking Christian morality to support "an
economic argument" for a "preference for the repentant sinner over the
righteous man who never strays from the path". Cute, but to my mind dubious
economics and, yes, even more dubious morality.



And what about Hirschman's policy advice based on his "theory of unbalanced
growth" (about which M June Flanders has written much): deliberately approve
projects for which there is no demand (but lots of nice backward and forward
supply-side linkages) so that while those projects go bust the resultant
bottlenecks and shortages elsewhere will then induce others to invest
profitably there?

Or his complacency over rapid population growth because it too leads to
"development-enhancing" bottlenecks?



Or his urging that the development agencies bring caravans full of the
"cornucopia of modern civilisation" to the edge of villages so that their
tradition-bound inhabitants can be wrenched out of their deplorable lack of
rational economic aspirations? But maybe he didn't explicitly use the word
deplorable.

- Roger Sandilands

________________________________
From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Ana Maria Bianchi [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, June 08, 2013 12:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] OUP series

Roger Sandilands also employs the word "immoral" to refer to Hirschman's
hiding hand principle, which I think he should not do, as historian of
thought.

----- FIDEL AROCHE <[log in to unmask]> escreveu:
>

Dear all,
Roger Sandilands disaproves Raul Prebisch's contributions to economics on
the grounds that Mr Prebisch was a "protectionist". It's sad to see that
ideological motives are used as arguments against a man whose heterodox
ideas proved to be so useful, even if so many blame him for phenomena beyond
the scope of his work.

> I wonder also what's Mr Sandilands opinion about earlier contributors to
development economics who advocate protectionism as well, on different
grounds, such as Hamilton and continue to be heared by advocates of third
party liberalism (never to be practised at home), such as the USA.

>
Regards
Fidel Aroche


2013/6/6 Roger Sandilands
<[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>

I have to say that I am very lukewarm toward Oscar Ugarteche's suggestion of
Raul Prebisch - and the main reason he gives (his influential support to
ECLA for the kind of import substituting industrialisation protectionism
that theAsian NIEs early rejected in favour of more outward-oriented
policies that propelled them to much more rapid growth than in Latin
America).

Likewise, one of my last choices would be Albert Hirschman (another
protectionist and type of "structuralist" whose work in Colombia in the
early 1950s was rightly opposed by the more thoughtful economists there, and
whose ideas on backward and forward linkages, to be promoted through the (to
my mind immoral) "principle of the hiding hand" -- the duping of investors
into putting their money {not Hirschman's} into projects whose benefiits are
deliberately exaggerated and whose true costs are concealed by civil
servants).

Nevertheless, I respect Michele Alacevich's canvassing of Hirschman's name.
His recent book, The Political Economy of the World Bank: The Early Years
(Stanford UP, 2009) contains a very full description of Hirschman's bitter
conflicts with Lauchlin Currie in Colombia, though perhaps with not enough
insight into the relative depths of their economic visions, perseverance,
and actual achievements.