The Integration of Micro and Macroeconomics from a Historical Perspective

31 July 2009 at 1:16 pm Peter G. Klein 2 comments

| Peter Klein |

That’s the title of a conference next week at the University of São Paulo featuring eminent economists and historians of economic thought such as Robert Gordon, Kevin Hoover, Wade Hands, and Phil Mirowski. According to the conference website the proceedings will be streamed live, so you can participate even if you can’t make it to São Paulo.

Entry filed under: - Klein -, Conferences.

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2 Comments Add your own

1. Rafe | 31 July 2009 at 5:07 pm

There is a problem with the eminence of Wade Hands. This is a somewhat terse review of his 2000 book on the state of the art in the philosophy of economics.
http://www.the-rathouse.com/shortreviews/revWadeHands.html
2. Rafe Champion | 1 August 2009 at 3:35 am

Readers of the review will recall a reference to Stanley Wong’s critique of Samuelson. Phil Miroski wrote a foreword to a new edition of Wong’s book, 25 years on. The remarkable aspect of the episode is the apparent failure of the profession, and the man himself, to take any notice of the critique.

Click to access Wong_Introduction.pdf

Wong’s approach, thanks to one of his supervisors (Larry Boland) drew explicitly from Popper’s theory of metaphysical research programs which highlights the need to locate theories in the context of the various stated and unstated assumptions that make problems interesting and important (or not). This incidentally drew a sideswipe from Mirowski, as though drawing on Popper is a negative rather than a positive.

The book is based on Wong’s PhD which he wrote in Cambridge under the supervision and guidance of Joan Robinson, Luigi Pasinetti, Lawrence Boland and Geoff Harcourt. For people with an interest in sport, Geoff stayed in Adelaide for some years although Cambridge was his intellectual home because he was addicted to playing Australian football and he stayed here as long as he could play the game in a competition. We played together in the Adelaide Uni fifth team for a season when i was about 21 and he was a decade or two older. He was the captain and the most enthusiastic player in the team. I don’t think there was a lower team than the fifth so I guess he was getting near the end of the road.