==================== 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 
e-mail: [log in to unmask] 
 
============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]