----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- [This DISC is preceded by several responses to Daniele Besomi's posting with the subject "WWW -- Harrod home-age." -- RBE] I have just taken a look at some, but not all, of the papers associated with the origins of the multiplier-accelerator model (I do not have all of them available at the moment, although I have read most of them before). 1) The argument that Giblin invented the multiplier looks to me to be a hard one to make, based on reading his lecture. It certainly is not the multiplier as it is usually formulated, although there are hints of it there, surely. In any case, Giblin does not have an accelerator model in his lecture that I could spot, so he is not in the running on having developed the multiplier-accelerator model. 2) Although one reads frequently that R.F. Kahn "discovered" or "invented" the multiplier (according to Keynes, anyway), I do not know where he published that result, if he even did. 3) Although he did not work out a mathematical model, J.M. Clark not only had the idea of the accelerator, but understood that it was associated with a multiplier effect as well prior to both Kalecki and Harrod. The source is J.M. Clark, "Capital Production and Consumer-taking: A Further Word," Journal of Political Economy, Oct. 1932, pp. 692-93. In particular, although he sees an initiation of a change in investment from a decrease in consumer demand, he then notes that the decrease in investment, "in turn reduces purchasing power, unless offset by opposite movements elsewhere, and results in a positive decrease in consumers' demand." If that is not the multiplier effect interacting with the accelerator effect, I do not know what is. 4) The Kalecki model has certain mathematical problems. It is a sort of multiplier- accelerator model, but not a full blown one. 5) In his original paper in REStat in 1939, Samuelson only mentions Alvin Hansen (who wrote in 1938) as an influence on him. He reiterates this in a piece in 1959 in REStat. However, he discusses Harrod's role in his less well known paper from later in that year, "A Synthesis of the Principle of Acceleration and the Multiplier," Journal of Political Economy, 1939, Dec. 1939, pp. 786-797. He provides the quote from Clark in there that I just noted. He gives a lot of credit to Harrod (and does not mention Kalecki), but also declares that "Upon rigorous analysis his exposition will be found to abound with non sequiturs and oversimplifications. On the whole Harrod's intuition surpasses his reasoned conclusions." In short, Harrod clearly played a very important role. But, he would appear to be neither the inventor of the idea of combining a multiplier with an accelerator, credit for which should probably go to J.M. Clark, nor of producing a fully consistent and rigorous model that does so. Barkley Rosser ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]