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Hicks et l'économie de la dépression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2015

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Résumé

Durant les années 1930, Hicks cherche à comprendre la crise à laquelle l'économie mondiale est confrontée. Mais à la différence de la plupart des économistes de l'époque, il tente de se représenter théoriquement la situation dans un cadre d'équilibre général walrassien. Le présent article étudie la façon dont Hicks a développé cette approche dans les derniers chapitres de Valeur et capital (1939). Hicks en vient à affirmer que les fluctuations du système capitaliste mettent son existence en danger et forme le projet d'une théorie des cycles qui accorderait une place centrale aux anticipations de prix et intégrerait un scénario d'effondrement du système. Les difficultés que ce projet rencontre dès 1939 sont analysées afin d'expliquer son abandon dans A Contribution to the Theory of the Trade Cycle (1950).

Summary

Summary

During the 1930s, Hicks tried to understand the crisis to which capitalist systems were confronted. But unlike most economists of his time, he attempted to apply a Walrasian general equilibrium framework to the situation. The present paper studies how Hicks developed this approach in the last chapters of Value and Capital (1939). Hicks came to argue that the fluctuations of the capitalist system endangered its existence and imagined a theory of the trade cycle giving a major role to expectations and showing the possibility of an economic collapse. The paper analyses the problems raised by this research program in order to explain why Hicks abandoned it while he wrote A Contribution to the Theory of the Trade Cycle (1950).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 2011 

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Footnotes

*

Goulven Rubin, LED et Université de Paris 8. Email: [email protected]. Adresse: 2, rue de la liberié 93526 Saint-Denis Cedex. Je voudrais remercier Carlo Benetti, Alain Béraud, Mauro Boianovsky, Michel De Vroey, Franco Donzelli, les participants du séminaire interne du LED ainsi que les deux rapporteurs anonymes de cette revue pour leurs commentaires sur des versions anterieures de ce texte. Je reste seul responsable des thèses développées

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