This paper documents an early fork in the development of macroeconomics, by examining a debate between the Dutch economists Jan Tinbergen and Johan Koopmans. In a 1932 paper, Tinbergen argued that two firms could be stuck in a 'bad' equilibrium in the absence of a coordinated action to increase...

In The Trade Cycle, Roy Harrod [1936a] propounded the Law of Diminishing Elasticity of Demand. The present paper tries to clarify the precise role Harrod assigned to this law in his The Trade Cycle Theory. We discuss the micro and macro foundations of the Law of Diminishing Elasticity of Demand...

Business cycles and growth are considered as independent fields for decades. Indeed, after the Second World War, when macroeconomics began to develop through an increased use of mathematical models, the problem of analyzing growth-cycles dynamics appeared as a real (and certainly also...

In The Trade Cycle, Roy Harrod [1936a] propounded the Law of Diminishing Elasticity of Demand. The present paper tries to clarify the precise role Harrod assigned to this law in order to understand his trade cycle theory. We discuss the micro and macro foundations of the Law of Diminishing...

Oskar Lange’s 1938 article “The Rate of Interest and the Optimum Propensity to Consume”, is usually associated with the original IS-LM approach of the late 1930s. However, Lange’s article was not only an attempt to illuminate Keynes’s main innovations but the first part of a wide...

There is a short period, at the eve of the Second World War, where the development of macroeconomic theory pushed imperfect competition to the fore. During this period called by Shackle the ‘years of high theory’, many issues concerning income distribution and the trade cycle were raised....

The canonical history of macroeconomics, one of the rival schools of thought and the great economists, gives Robert Lucas a prominent role in shaping the recent developments in the area. According to it, his followers were initially split into two camps, the "real business cycle" theorists with...

The present study centres on Meade's Simplified Keynesian Model (1937) presented in 1936. The objective of this paper is to show that Meade's model foreshadows the studies (Kalecki (1944), Tobin (1975)) which refute wage rigidity as the benchmark between Keynesian and Classical models. In...

In this short note, we wonder on the opportunity to express Keynes's central message with a static model. Because the phenomena described by Keynes are dynamic, especially the ones described in chapter 19 of the General Theory, we think that they must be analysed with a dynamic model. Deciding...

In a closely argued book, Patinkin [1982] has concluded that Michal Kalecki did not anticipate the General Theory. The three main arguments developed by Patinkin are discussed with reference to his interpretation of Keynes?'s General Theory. Focused on Kalecki?'s 1934, article, that Patinkin did...