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In a letter to the editors of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Jean-Marc Ginoux and Franck Jovanovic claim that my work on Ragnar Frisch is 'useless' and has 'no merit' (p.8). I will gladly take this opportunity to explain my research on Ragnar Frisch and why it remains unscathed from their hand-waving. It remains unscathed because their very narrow criticism of my mathematical solution of Frisch's model has no grounding. But it is also unscathed because they do not even address the historiographical points I was making in my paper.

In the early 1950s, the drive to find a practical solution to European antagonisms led to the construction of the first Common Market at the European scale, between Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. At the heart of the Coal and Steel Community, was the idea that shared economic interests would prevent the occurrence of new wars. The institutions created for this purpose led to a new distribution of powers between member states, firms and a supranational power that was tasked to prevent discrimination and organize exchanges between the six countries. By examining the jurisprudence and administrative regulations produced from the early 1950s to the early 1960s, I distinguish between three types of rules grounded in different approaches to competition. This analysis gives a new meaning to the idea of 'ordered competition,' and the sources of inspiration behind the construction of Europe.

In a 1932 policy paper, the Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen suggested that there could be two stable equilibria in a model with two firms acting in two sectors, with one of the equilibria having more production and employment. Arguing on the basis of a diagram that firms could not get out of the "bad" equilibrium on their own, he suggested that this justified government interventions to increase employment. While he referred to the general equilibrium systems of Walras and Cassel, he did not present a fully worked out model but referred to the unpublished study of one J. G. Koopmans. The latter was spurred by Tinbergen's reference to publish his ideas on the problem of multiple equilibria. In his three-part paper, he underlined that a Walrasian system could not show Tinbergen's coordination problem, because there could be no unemployment at an equilibrium point in a Walrasian model. The examples he presented, with three equilibria, showed that they could not be ordered. After this exchange, Tinbergen moved away from Walrasian multiple equilibria, and abandoned the general equilibrium approach to economic modeling in favor of the macrodynamic approach that was developed at the same time by Ragnar Frisch and Michal Kalecki.

Although Leontief was and still is one of the most recognized names in economics, inextricably linked to the development of input-output techniques, he remained fiercely critical of other economists' works and of the state of economic science during his whole life. To understand his bitterness, we go back to the root of the split between Leontief and the rest of the economics profession, through an examination of the debates that took place in the late 1940s. From his input-output model, conceived as an operational theory of economic interdependencies, Leontief drew a specific approach to economic policy and planning which had a lot of success with government agencies, explaining how he could durably sustain his split from the profession.

The argument of this paper is that Jacques Rueff and F.A. Hayek can be made to have a constructive dialogue that informs our understanding of how both authors approached such issues as the role of government in society and the meaning of spontaneous order. Through an analysis of their uses of the price mechanism as an ordering principle, and an examination of how they both moved towards a legal-institutional approach to understand the world, the common elements in their systems are brought out and fitted in a longer liberal tradition concerned not only with the meaning of competition, but with the conditions fostering the emergence of social order in the midst of individual chaos. Rueff’s involvement in the construction of the European Coal and Steel Community gives an interesting application of their systems to a concrete experiment in creating a rational economic order in postwar Europe. The examination of the case law of the Court of Justice of the Community demonstrates how much the principle of competition was subordinate to a political ideal of peace relying on limiting governments to prevent wars, a mechanism at the center of both Hayek’s and Rueff’s systems.

Source : ABES [http://www.idref.fr/033702462/id] - theses.fr, 01/02/2023 ; Thèse de doctorat en Sciences économiques; "This dissertation contributes to the history of economic thought through a study of the emergence and development from the 1930s to the 1950s of a new set of approaches to the economy, with the development of a common mathematical language on economic change and macroeconomics. The general introduction paints the background of what macrodynamics was and who the early econometricians were, and brings out the main themes of the different case studies: the role of meetings and gatherings in the social construction of a new field of economics, and the use of mathematics as a language used to express different perspective on the world. Chapter 1 goes back on the circumstances surrounding the development at the turn of the 1920s-1930s of “macrodynamic” models, a term originating with Ragnar Frisch. These models were developed to talk about the economy as a whole, particularly from the point of view of dynamics and stability, through the discussion of issues such as the origin of business cycles and growth. Chapter 2 gives new insights on Ragnar Frisch’s 1933 model and the development of mixed difference differential equations by economists. Through a new solution of the model based on the Laplace transform and its inverse, I was able to correct some misinterpretations of the recent literature and to show where Frisch himself had erred in the solution of his model. This new approach allows me to underline that in his model Frisch was concerned both with the question of business cycle oscillations and growth.Chapters 3 and 4 go back on the work of Jan Tinbergen, one of the main protagonists of the macrodynamic research program. Chapter 3 concentrates on a nonlinear model he developped between 1934 and 1936, which he used to represent the possibility of having collapsing trajectories resulting from a small set of assumptions. Chapter 4 goes back on his use of nonlinear models and their multiple equilibria to discuss economic policy.Chapter 5 focuses on Wassily Leontief’s approach to the economy through the development of his input-output analysis. By going back to his discussions with Lawrence Klein and Tjalling Koopmans, I show how much Leontief was critical against the development of the macrodynamic program and the new approaches based on linear programming."; "Cette thèse contribue à l'histoire de la pensée économique à travers une étude de l'émergence et du développement, des années 1930 aux années 1950, d'un nouvel ensemble d'approches de l'économie, basé sur l’élaboration d'un langage mathématique commun sur le changement économique et la macroéconomie.L'introduction générale revient sur le contexte et la définition de ce qu'était la macrodynamique et de qui étaient les premiers économètres, et fait ressortir les principaux thèmes des différentes études de cas composant la thèse : le rôle des réunions et des rassemblements dans la construction sociale d'un nouveau champ de l'économie, et l'utilisation des mathématiques comme langage exprimant différentes perspectives sur le monde.Le chapitre 1 revient sur les circonstances entourant le développement au tournant des années 1920-1930 des modèles « macrodynamiques », un terme créé par Ragnar Frisch. Ces modèles ont été développés pour parler de l'économie dans son ensemble, notamment du point de vue de la dynamique et de la stabilité, à travers la discussion de questions telles que l'origine des cycles économiques et la croissance.Le chapitre 2 donne de nouvelles perspectives sur le modèle de Ragnar Frisch de 1933 et le développement des équations mixtes différence-différentielles. Grâce à une nouvelle solution du modèle basée sur la transformation de Laplace et son inverse, j'ai pu corriger certaines interprétations erronées de la littérature récente et montrer où Frisch lui-même s'était trompé dans la solution de son modèle. Cette nouvelle approche me permet de souligner que dans son modèle Frisch s'intéressait à la fois aux oscillations économique et à la croissance.Les chapitres 3 et 4 reviennent sur les travaux de Jan Tinbergen, l'un des principaux protagonistes du programme de recherche macrodynamique. Le chapitre 3 se concentre sur un modèle non linéaire qu'il a développé entre 1934 et 1936, et qu'il a utilisé pour représenter la possibilité d'avoir des trajectoires d'effondrement. Le chapitre 4 revient sur son utilisation des modèles non linéaires et d’équilibres multiples pour discuter de la politique économique.Le chapitre 5 se concentre sur l'approche de l'économie de Wassily Leontief à travers le développement de son analyse input-output. En revenant sur ses discussions avec Lawrence Klein et Tjalling Koopmans, je montre combien Leontief était critique contre le développement du programme macrodynamique et les nouvelles approches basées sur la programmation linéaire."

The place of Harvard in the development of econometrics is assessed through the research of its faculty and the development of the courses they taught. Over the course of the century, as the content of econometrics was itself transformed, we find that the Harvard department of economics occupied a singular place in the econometric landscape. This idiosyncrasy was defined by large projects such as the Harvard barometer of the 1920s or the postwar development of input-output analysis, but also by the lack of common purpose that often characterized the work of its members. Through the storied halls of the university passed many of the best and brightest, but few were given the chance to pursue their projects durably, to the detriment of the constitution of a "Harvard econometrics."

Leontief was and still is one of the most recognized names in economics, inextricably linked to the development of input-output techniques, but throughout his life he remained fiercely critical of other economists' works and of the state of economic science. To understand his bitterness, we go back to the root of the split between Leontief and the rest of the economics profession, through an examination based on new archival material of the debates that took place in the late 1940s. We show that these debates were concerned with the core of the practice of economists, the conduct of economic policy and the relation between rational individuals and the economy as a whole. From his input-output model, conceived as an operational theory of economic interdependencies, Leontief drew a specific approach to economic policy and planning which had a lot of success with government agencies, explaining how he could durably sustain his split from the profession.

As economic planners sought to rebuild Europe in the unstable postwar period, economic expertise was called upon to help in the drawing of national budgets and to inform economic and planning policies. A tool that circulated from academia to economic administrations was the input-output framework that had been developed by Wassily Leontief since the 1930s. As Leontief came into contact with other economists and with the goals of economic administrations, his framework was repurposed to give answers to the questions of economic planners. Statisticians and economists in Western Europe worked to integrate the input-output framework with the developing national accounts. Looking at their work with a particular focus on investment and development policies, I bring new insights on the role of experts, by showing that the input-output model had little impact on the actual coordination of economic policies.

In 1933, Ragnar Frisch introduced a distinction between micro-dynamics and macro-dynamics in his paper on "Propagation problems and impulse problems in dynamic economics." His claim that he proposed the first macro-dynamic analysis and that micro-dynamic schemes were limited to the dynamics of specific markets or behaviors had a lasting impact on the field. But the introduction of this separation created a narrative hiding what had been done before and introduced a tension between the two approaches. By going back to the content of micro-dynamic analysis, we are led to two lines of research that were pursued during the 1920s and early 1930s: cobweb models and intertemporal optimization. A pivotal economist for going beyond micro-dynamics was Jan Tinbergen, who had contributed to both these approaches, and went beyond with new analytical tools. However, the idea of intertemporal optimization met with some opposition when it was scaled up to the whole economic system. This prompted Frisch to propose his new approach, which met with immediate success as more schemes were proposed. Tinbergen was himself one of the first converts to macro-dynamics, but the links between the two approaches and the new tensions created by their separation remained. This tension between the newly created categories can be viewed as a result of opposing views on causality, which were rooted in differing mathematical approaches, a point explicitly made by the next generation.

In 1930, Ludwig Hamburger published in Dutch an article on the possibility to account for "economic instability" by using relaxation oscillations, a model of nonlinear vibrations which had recently been developed by the physicist Balthazar van der Pol. Hamburger's article, translated in French in 1931, attracted a strong interest in the nascent Econometric Society and in particular from Ragnar Frisch and François Divisia, who decided to make it one of the theme of the first European meeting of the Econometric Society, scheduled in Lausanne in 1931. Although Hamburger did not provide an economic theory going beyond the analogy with van der Pol's equation, he did propose to integrate shocks in his models in a manner that was completely different from what came after him. His approach was however shunned by other economists because its potentialities were not understood for at least three reasons. It took two decades before Richard Goodwin, spurred by the same physicist that was present at the early meetings of the Econometric Society, finally managed to build a convincing economic model relying on nonlinear oscillations.

"This article provides a comprehensive view of Tinbergen’s macrodynamic models during the1930s and early 1940s, to show how the economist’s concerns evolved from problems ofinstability to the idea of reaching higher positions of equilibria.Starting from the ideas developed around the first meetings of the Econometric Society, we showthat Tinbergen built his own macrodynamic model with the aim to consider several problems ofeconomic policy, in particular the effects of public expenditures and changes in money wages.One of the possibilities that Tinbergen underlined throughout his models was the threat ofcomplete or partial collapse stemming from the presence of multiple equilibria.From the mid-1930s, Tinbergen gained confidence in the power of economic policies to stabilizethe economy, and his attention shifted to the final position of equilibrium, and the policies thatcould improve it. His most well-known models developed for the League of Nations addressedthat issue and showed how the final equilibrium may be shifted by “permanent” policies. Weargue that Tinbergen also considered the case that the economy could be lifted by temporarypolicies in the presence of multiple equilibria.Based on papers published by Tinbergen in Dutch, French and German that for the most parthave never been translated, this article offers a new perspective to the development of earlymacrodynamic modeling. From this literature the originality, breadth and pioneering ideas ofTinbergen clearly come out and explain many of his sometimes paradoxical policy positions."

Ragnar Frisch's famous "rocking horse" model has been the object of much praise and even controversy since its publication in 1933. In this paper, we propose a new simulation of the trajectories of the model to clarify those controversies and show that there exists cyclical solutions for a large set of parameters. By building an analytical solution that takes the same form as Frisch's original solution, we are also able to provide new insights into the ideas that he encapsulated in his model. In particular, we show that the author tried to construct a model that would combine both cycles and growth. Finally, the exploration of Frisch's formal construction of the model leads us to link his statistical work on the decomposition of time series with the construction of the 1933 model.

In 1932, Jan Tinbergen proposed an explanation of the Great Depression based on a specific treatment of unstable processes and multiple equilibria. While he outlined a possible mechanism based on a specific treatment of firms' interactions, this first explanation was later abandoned in favor of more dynamic mechanisms, but he did not cast aside the idea of multiple equilibria and instability. After his involvement in the early meetings of the econometric society, he started working on different dynamic models that would account for this instability. In 1934, Tinbergen built a model to generate new types of economic movements that did not return to an equilibrium. This led him in 1936 to consider the possibility of having two equilibria, one stable, one unstable, with damped or self-sustained cycles around the high equilibrium and a collapse once the economy reaches the low equilibrium. Tinbergen saw these models, with reference to Fisher's 1933 classic Econometrica paper, as a way to interpret the potential of a crisis to trigger the collapse of the economy. At the end of the day, it turns out that Tinbergen managed to open a new avenue of research which, strikingly, remains almost totally ignored in most history of macroeconomics and econometrics.