琼·罗宾逊与麻省理工学院

Joan Robinson and MIT

History of Political Economy · 2017
被引 5
人大 A-ABS 2

中文导读

回顾了琼·罗宾逊1953年论文引发的资本理论争论,指出其批判包含建设性和消极两部分,并论证争论揭示了动态一般均衡模型中的根本未解问题,而非浪费时间。

Abstract

Roger Backhouse remarks in “MIT and the Other Cambridge” (History of Political Economy 46, supplement) that the capital theory controversy came to be seen by most of the economics profession as a waste of time. Joan Robinson's 1953 paper “The Production Function and the Theory of Capital” started the controversy. An abbreviated version, published in the second volume of her Collected Economic Papers, made clear that her critique came in two parts. The “constructive” part drew attention to the phenomena of reverse capital deepening and re-switching of techniques and attracted the interest of theorists at MIT and elsewhere. The “negative” part concerned the problem of getting into equilibrium and was, for Robinson, the essence of the controversy. A close reading of the literature shows not only that Robinson was never credited with an understanding of the Achilles' heel that plagues dynamic general equilibrium models, but also that the problem, though variously recognized, was essentially ignored. The suggestion that the capital theory controversy was a waste of time fails to recognize that Robinson had drawn attention to a fundamental unsolved problem in economic theory.

资本理论争论罗宾逊MIT一般均衡模型