Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T18:58:09.384Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Finding New Wine In Old Bottles: What Historians Must Do When Leontief Coefficients are no Longer the Designated Drivers of Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Laurence S. Moss
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1951, Nobel Laureate Wassily Leontief put his finger on what was wrong with economics. It had remained a “deductive system resting upon a static set of premises,” when what was needed was an economics that would “combine economic facts and theory.” The new economics would be called “interindustry” or “input-output” analysis (Leontief 1966, p. 14). According to Leontief it is easy to “compute the complete table of input requirements at any given level of output, provided we know its input ratios.” These input ratios could be calculated from “engineering data on process design and operating procedure” (ibid., pp. 24–26). For Leontief and, I suspect, a large number of economists in 1951, the technological facts dependent only on the chemical and physical laws of nature—what I shall call “Leontief coefficients”—were indisputable. It would take so many units of coke to produce a ton of pig iron whether or not there was a human being alive on earth to witness that transformation. The Leontief coefficients were the bedrock of subsequent economic analysis. They were analogous to what the philosopher John R. Searle has termed “brute facts” (Searle 1995, p. 27).

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , Fall 1995 , pp. 179 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Akerlof, George A. 1984. “The Market for ‘Lemons’: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism” in idem., An Economist's Book of Tales, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bator, Francis M. 1957. “The Simple Analytics of Welfare Maximization” American Economic Review, 03, 47, 22–59.Google Scholar
Baumol, William J. 1961. Economic Theory and Operations Analysis, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1972.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary S. 1964. Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education, Columbia University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Blaug, Mark. 1985. Great Economists Since Keynes: An Introduction to the Lives and Works of One Hundred Economists, Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Blaug, Mark. 1968. Economic Theory in Retrospect, R. D. Irwin, Homewood.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. and Gordon, Tullock. 1962. The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Burby, William E. 1965. Handbook of the Law of Real Property, 3d. ed., West Publishing, St. Paul.Google Scholar
Carlson, Sune. 1956. A Study on the Pure Theory of Production, Augustus M. Kelley, New York.Google Scholar
Cheung, Steven N. S. 1969. The Theory of Share Tenancy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Coase, Ronald. 1937. “The Nature of the Firm,” Economica, 4, 11, 368–405; and in Coase, 1988, 33–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coase, Ronald. 1960. “The Problem of Social Cost,” Journal of Law and Economics, 3, 10, 1–44; and in Coase, 1988, 95–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coase, Ronald. 1988. The Firm, the Market, and the Law, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Commons, John R. 1968. Legal Foundations of Capitalism, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.Google Scholar
Demsetz, Harold. 1988. The Organization of Economic Activity, 2, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Goodhart, Charles A. E. 1994. “Game Theory for Central Bankers: A Report to the Governor of the Bank of England,” Journal of Economic Literature, 32, 03, 101–14.Google Scholar
Groves, Harold M. 1974. Tax Philosophers: Two Hundred Years of Thought in Great Britain and the United States, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.Google Scholar
Haberler, Gottfried. 1936. The Theory of International Trade with Its Application to Commercial Policy, Stonier, and Benham, F.; translated from the German ed. of 1933, Macmillan, New York.Google Scholar
Hart, Oliver. 1983. “Optimal Labour Contracts Under Asymmetric Information: An Introduction,” Review of Economic Studies, 50, 3–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harth, P. 1970. “Introduction,” in Bernard, Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, Penguin, New York, 7–50.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1945. “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review, 35, 09 1945, 519–30; and in his Individualism and Economic Order, Routledge, London, 1949, 77–91.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A.. 1978. “Competition as a Discovery Procedure,” in New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 179–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hearn, William Edward. 1851. On Cottier Rents, Hodges and Smith, Dublin.Google Scholar
Heimann, E. 1964. History of Economic Doctrines: An Introduction to Economic Theory, Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. 1651. Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill, Andrew Crooke, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollander, Samuel. 1985. The Economics of John Stuart Mill, 2, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.Google Scholar
Jorgenson, Dale W. and Fraumeni, Barbara M.. 1992. “The Output of the Education Sector,” in Jorgenson, Dale W., Productivity: Postwar U. S. Economic Growth, 1, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, 333–69.Google Scholar
Jorgenson, Dale W. and Fraumeni, Barbara M.. 1992. “The Accumulation of Human and Nonhuman Capital, 1948–1984” in Jorgenson, Dale W., Productivity: International Comparisons of Economic Growth, 2, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, 273–331.Google Scholar
Kenen, Peter B. 1965. “Nature, Capital, and Trade,” Journal of Political Economy, 73, 10, 437–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalil, Elias L. 1995. “Has Economics Progressed? Rectilinear, Historicist, Universalist, and Evolutionary Historiographies,” History of Political Economy, 27, 44–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, Frank H. 1921. Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, Houghton Mifflin, Boston.Google Scholar
Lane, F. C. and Mueller, R. C.. 1985. Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice: Coins and Moneys of Account, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, John. 1994. Essay on A Land Bank, edited by Murphy, Antoin E., Aeon Publishing, Dublin.Google Scholar
Law, John. 1705. Law, Money and Trade Considered with a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money, Augustus M. Kelley, New York, 1966.Google Scholar
Leibenstein, Harvey. 1978. General X-Efficiency Theory and Economic Development, Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Leibenstein, Harvey. 1980. Beyond Economic Man: A New Foundation for Microeconomics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Leontief, Wassily. 1951. “Input-Output Economics,” Scientific American, reprinted in Leontief, W., Input-Output Economics, Oxford University Press, New York, 1966.Google Scholar
Lewin, Peter. 1994. “Capital Theory,” in Boettke, Peter J., The Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics, Elgar, Aldershot, 209–15.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Donald and Arjo, Klamer. 1995. “One Quarter of GDP Is Persuasion,” American Economic Review, 85, 05, 191–95.Google Scholar
Machlup, Fritz. 1980. Knowledge: Its Creation, Distribution, and Economic Significance, 2, Princeton University Press, Princeton.Google Scholar
Mandeville, Bernard. 1974. Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits, edited by Kaye, F. B., 2, Oxford University Press, London.Google Scholar
Marshall, Alfred. 1961. Principles of Economics, 2, Notes, edited by Guillebaud, C. W., 2, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1965. Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, 33, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.Google Scholar
Morgenstern, Oskar. 1950. On the Accuracy of Economic Observations, 1950, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1963.Google Scholar
Moss, Laurence S. 1977. “Some Public-Choice Aspects of Hobbes's Political Thought,” History of Political Economy, 9, 257–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moss, Laurence S. 1991. “Thomas Hobbes's Influence on David Hume: The Emergence of a Public Choice Tradition,” History of Political Economy, 24, 587–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moss, Laurence S. 1995. “Market Process Perspectives on Post-Communist Economies,” presented at the Western Economic Association meetings,San DiegoJuly 1995.Google Scholar
Murphy, Antoin. 1994. “Commentary,” in Law, 1994, 17–52.Google Scholar
Neelakantan, S. 1985. “Bernier on Property Rights: A Note,” History of Political Economy, 17, 34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglas and Thomas, Robert P.. 1973. The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oresme, Nicole. 1951. “Traictie de la Première Invention de Monnaies,” 1350–60 estimated; translated as: “A Treatise on the Origin, Nature, Law and Alteration of Money” in Monroe, A. E., Early Economic Thought: Selections from the Economic Literature Prior to Adam Smith, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Orwell, George. 1962. 1984, Harcourt, Brace and World, New York.Google Scholar
Pitchik, Carolyn and Andrew, Schotter. 1987. “Honesty in a Model of Strategic Information Transmission,” American Economic Review, 77, 12, 1032–36.Google Scholar
Pollock, Frederick and Maitland, Frederic W.. 1982. The History of English Law, 2, Legal Classics Library, Birmingham, Alabama.Google Scholar
Probyn, J. W. 1876. Systems of Land Tenure, Cassell, Peter and Galpin, London.Google Scholar
Ricardo, David. 1815. An Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock, in The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, edited by Sraffa, P. and Dobb, M. H., 4, 11, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1–41.Google Scholar
Robbins, Lionel. 1962. An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Roll, Eric. 1963. A History of Economic Thought, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Nathan and Birdzell, L. E. Jr. 1986. How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World, Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Samuels, Warren J. 1989. “The Legal-Economic Nexus,” George Washington Law Review, 57, 1556–78.Google Scholar
Schmookler, Jacob. 1966. Invention and Economic Growth, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schultz, Theodore W. 1961. “Investment in Human Capital,” American Economic Review, 51, 1–16.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1954. A History of Economic Analysis, Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Searle, John R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality, Free Press, New York.Google Scholar
Shionoya, Yuichi. 1990. “Instrumentalism in Schumpeter's Economic Methodology.” History of Political Economy, 22, 187–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, Herbert A. 1956. Models of Man, Wiley, New York.Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin. 1988a. “A Reply to My Critics,” in James, Tully, ed., Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics, Princeton University Press, Princeton.Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin. 1988b. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” in James, Tully, ed., Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics, Princeton University Press, Princeton.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1982. “Report of This Lectures on Jurisprudence 1766,” in Lectures on Jurisprudence, edited by Ronald, Meek, Raphael, and Stein, , Liberty Classics, Indianapolis.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1976. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, in The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, edited by Cambell, R. H., Skinner, A. S. and Todd, W. B., Liberty Classics, Indianapolis.Google Scholar
Stigler, George J. 1941. Production and Distribution Theories: The Formative Period, Macmillan, New York.Google Scholar
Vaughn, Karen I. 1994. Austrian Economics in America: The Migration of a Tradition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Viner, Jacob. 1937. Studies in the Theory of International Trade, George Allen, London.Google Scholar
Williamson, Oliver. 1986. Economic Organization: Firms, Markets and Policy Control, New York University Press, New York.Google Scholar