Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T18:50:03.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Folklore of H. L. Moore on the Demand for Pig Iron

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Nancy J. Wulwick
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

According to the folklore of economics, H. L. Moore (1869–1958) in Economic Cycles: Their Law and Cause (1914) mistakenly called his estimates of the supply of pig iron the demand for pig iron. The reviews of Economic Cycles by R. A. Lehfeldt (1915) and P. G. Wright (1915) initiated the folklore, which G. J. Stigler (1962) repeated in his obituary of Moore. Recently the folklore reappeared in histories of economics by M. Blaug (1986), K. Kim (1988), R. J. Epstein (1989), and M. S. Morgan (1990). Morgan, who was particularly critical of Moore, wrote that his empirical work “produced a relationship which he interpreted as a positive demand curve for pig-iron. This, of course, contradicted the negative relationship between the price and quantity stipulated by standard economic theory…. Moore's approach was a mixture. At its worst, it involved both the unthinking application of theory to data and the adoption of empirically derived relationships without reference to theory” (Morgan 1990, pp. 28, 141).

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , Fall 1992 , pp. 168 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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

Allen, R. G. D. 1936. “Professor Slutsky's Theory of Consumers' Choice,” Review of Economic Studies, 3, 120–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, R. G. D. and Hicks, J. R. 1934. “A Reconsideration of the Theory of Value,” Economica, 1, 52–76, 196–219.Google Scholar
Babbage, C. 1961. On the Principles and Development of the Calculator and Other Seminal Writings by Charles Babbage and Others, Dover, New York.Google Scholar
Basmann, R. L. 1988. “Causality Tests and Observationally Equivalent Representations of Econometric Models,” Journal of Econometrics, 39, 69–104.Google Scholar
Basmann, R. L. and Wulwick, N. J.. 1992. “Reflections on the History of Econometrics Induced by R. J. Epstein's A History of Econometrics (1987) and M. S. Morgan's The History of Econometric Ideas (1990),” Methodus, 4, 154–65.Google Scholar
Blaug, M. 1986. Great Economists Before Keynes, Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Edgeworth, F. Y. 1881. Mathematical Psychics, reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley, New York, 1967.Google Scholar
Edgeworth, F. Y. 1915. “Recent Contributions to Mathematical Economics,” Economic Journal, 25, 36–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, R. J. 1987. A History of Econometrics, North-Holland, New York.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. E. and Saving, T. R. 1969. “Long-Run Scale Adjustments of a Perfectly Competitive Firm and Industry,” American Economic Review, 59, 774–83.Google Scholar
Groenewegen, P. D. 1988. “Alfred Marshall and the Establishment of the Cambridge Economic Tripos,” History of Political Economy, 20, 627–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heckman, J. J. 1992. “Haavelmo and the Birth of Modern Econometrics: A Review of the History of Econometric Ideas by Mary Morgan,” Journal of Economic Literature, 30, 876–86.Google Scholar
Johnson, W. E. 1913. “The Pure Theory of Utility Curves, The Economic Journal, 23, 483–513.Google Scholar
Kaye, N. J. 1956. Pioneer Econometric of Henry Ludwell Moore, unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Kim, K. 1988. Equilibrium Business Cycle Theory in Historical Perspective, Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Lehfeldt, R. A. 1914. “The Elasticity of Demand for Wheat,” Economic Journal, 24, 212–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehfeldt, R. A. 1915. “Economic Cycles: Their Law and Cause, by H. L. Moore,” Economic Journal, 25, 409–11.Google Scholar
Maloney, J. 1985. Marshall, Orthodoxy and the Professionalisation of Economics, Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Marshall, A. 1898. Principles of Economics, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Mirowski, P. 1990. “Problems in the Paternity of Econometrics: Henry Ludwell Moore,” History of Political Economy, 22, 587–609.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, W. C. 1913. Business Cycles and their Causes, Porcupine Press, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Moore, H. L. 1908. “The Statistical Complement of Pure Economics,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 23, 1–33.Google Scholar
Moore, H. L. 1911. Laws of Wages, reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley, Fairfield, 1967.Google Scholar
Moore, H. L. 1914. Business Cycles: Their Law and Cause, reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley, Fairfield, 1967.Google Scholar
Moore, H. L. 1917. Forecasting the Yield and the Price of Cotton, reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley, Fairfield, 1967.Google Scholar
Moore, H. L. 1919. “Empirical Laws of Demand and Supply and the Flexibility of Prices,” Political Science Quarterly, 34, 546–67.Google Scholar
Moore, H. L. 1923. Generating Economic Cycles, reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley, Fairfield, 1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, H. L. 1925. “A Moving Equilibrium of Demand and Supply,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 39, 357–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, H. L. 1929. Synthetic Economics, reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley, Fairfield, 1967.Google Scholar
Morgan, M. S.. 1990. The History of Econometric Ideas, Cambridge University Press, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pareto, V. 1898. Cours d'économie politique, Rouge, Lausanne.Google Scholar
Pareto, V. 1909. Manuel d'économie politique, AMS, New York.Google Scholar
Pearson, K. 1900. “On the Criterion that a Given System of Deviations from the Probable in the Case of a Correlated System of Variables Is Such that It Can Be Reasonably Supposed to Have Arisen from Random Sampling, reprinted in Karl Pearsons' Early Statistical Papers, Cambridge University Press, London, 1956.Google Scholar
Peart, S. J. 1991. “Sunspots and Expectations: W. S. Jevons's Theory of Economic Fluctuations,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 13, 243–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persons, W. M. 1915. “Economic Cycles: Their Law and Cause. By Henry Ludwell Moore,” American Economic Review, 5, 645–48.Google Scholar
Pigou, A. C. 1930. “The Statistical Derivation of Demand Curves,” Economic Journal, 40, 384–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pigou, A. C. 1932. Economic of Welfare, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Porter, T. M. 1986. The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820–1900, Princeton University Press, Princeton.Google Scholar
Roberts, G. E. 1922. Panics, Crises and Depressions, American Chamber of Economics, New York.Google Scholar
Schultz, H. 1925. “The Statistical Law of Demand as Illustrated by the Demand for Sugar,” Journal of Political Economy, 31, 577–637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schultz, H. 1928. Statistical Laws of Demand and Supply, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Schultz, H. 1938. The Theory and Measurement of Demand, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J. A. 1954. History of Economic Analysis, Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Shepherd, G. S. 1950. Agricultural Price Analysis, Iowa State College Press, Ames.Google Scholar
Slutsky, E. 1915. “Sulla teoria del bilancio del consumatore,” Giornale degli Economisti, 51, 1026, translated as “On the theory of the Budget of the Consumer,” in Readings in Price Theory, 4, edited by Stigler, G. and Boulding, K., Irwin, Homewood, 1952.Google Scholar
Stigler, G. J. 1939. “The Limitations of Statistical Demand Curves,” Journal of the American Statistical Association,34, 469–81.Google Scholar
Stigler, G. J. 1947. “Notes on the History of the Giffen Paradox,” Journal of Political Economy, 55, 152–56.Google Scholar
Stigler, G. J. 1954. “The Early History of Empirical Studies of Consumer Behavior,” Journal of Political Economy, 62, 95–113.Google Scholar
Stigler, G. J. 1962. “Henry L. Moore and Statistical Economics,” Econometrica, 30, 1–21,Google Scholar
Stigler, S. M. 1978. “Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, Statistician,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 141, 288–322.Google Scholar
Stigler, S. M. 1986. The History of Statistics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Taussig, F. W. 1921. “Is Market Price Determinate?” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 35, 394–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, D. A. 1982. “A Defense of Marshall on Substitutes and Complements in Consumption,” Eastern Economic Journal, 8, 67–78.Google Scholar
Whitman, R. H. 1934. “The Problem of Statistical Demand Techniques for Producers' Goods: An Application to Steel,” Journal of Political Economy, 42, 577–94.Google Scholar
Working, E. J. 1927. “What Do Statistical ‘Demand Curves’ Show?” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 41, 212–35.Google Scholar
Wright, P. G. 1915. “Review: Moore's Economic Cycles,” The Economic Journal, 29, 631–41.Google Scholar
Wright, P. G. 1922. “Moore's Work in Cycles: A Review,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 36, 691–704.Google Scholar
Yule, G. U. 1915. “Economic Cycles: Their Law and Cause. By Professor H. L. Moore,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 78, 302–305.Google Scholar
Zawadzki, W. E. 1914. Les Mathématique appliquées à l'économie politique, Rivière, Paris.Google Scholar