Kind of. Hicks wrote the most popular interpretation of Keynes. And he wrote it in a way that easily model-able. The vast majority of post war, pre lucas, practical and theoretical macroeconomics followed from Hicks. Without Hicks it would be more or less impossible to do numerical analysis and study of macroeconomics in the Keynesian structure. The other way would be to develop a new dynamics from whole cloth. Not something that is particularly easy*
That isn't a bad thing, I am guessing that most of the people doing that work in the 50's and 60s understood that that they were working with an abstraction. You a
At that point the people who were doing the work were either
A) People in the fight
or
B) Taught by people in the fight.
And by "in the fight" i mean the fight for the Keynesian macroeconomic worldview over the classical worldview. Which Keynes won. Hard.
*dynamics is hard because the only good solutions we have are local solutions(To solve a dynamic system you linearize the system around its equilibriums). You also need path functions for demand/supply. Which would mean that you either need microfoundations (which are another subject entirely) and/or you have to prognosticate. As a rule economists love to do that, but not in actual economic models. After getting off of a long fight to NOT use microfoundations because they produced wrong results when viewed in the static models no one was eager to get right back into it to try to see if they could get Dynamics looking like Keynes showed they should.
Additionally the math of dynamics was not as advanced as it is now. One of the things I have been studying is exhaustible resources. (which are a simple dynamic system compared to macro) and the solutions from the 30's to 50's are really ugly simply because some of the shortcuts had not been figured out.
That isn't a bad thing, I am guessing that most of the people doing that work in the 50's and 60s understood that that they were working with an abstraction. You a
At that point the people who were doing the work were either
A) People in the fight
or
B) Taught by people in the fight.
And by "in the fight" i mean the fight for the Keynesian macroeconomic worldview over the classical worldview. Which Keynes won. Hard.
*dynamics is hard because the only good solutions we have are local solutions(To solve a dynamic system you linearize the system around its equilibriums). You also need path functions for demand/supply. Which would mean that you either need microfoundations (which are another subject entirely) and/or you have to prognosticate. As a rule economists love to do that, but not in actual economic models. After getting off of a long fight to NOT use microfoundations because they produced wrong results when viewed in the static models no one was eager to get right back into it to try to see if they could get Dynamics looking like Keynes showed they should.
Additionally the math of dynamics was not as advanced as it is now. One of the things I have been studying is exhaustible resources. (which are a simple dynamic system compared to macro) and the solutions from the 30's to 50's are really ugly simply because some of the shortcuts had not been figured out.
Reply
Leave a comment