Leontief’s input-output models are usually viewed as simplified classical (neo-Ricardian) models. However, this interpretation hides two opposed views. On the one hand, the common interpretation, based on Koopmans and Samuelson’s works, considers the so-called “models of Leontief” as...

Depuis les années 1990, l’histoire de la pensée économique s’intéresse aux « marges » de la discipline et notamment aux pratiques économiques, à la profession d’économiste ainsi qu’à l’économie appliquée et à l’économie empirique. Elle n’est plus cantonnée à une...

Indubitably born in the USA, input-output analysis has an important European history, from its very beginnings in the Soviet Union to the postwar huge development of I/O techniques in West and North Europe. This paper studies the European experience of input-output analysis by surveying and...

As a case study on the status of women in the economics profession, this article analyzes the fascinating career of Anne P. Carter. Prior to 1966 there were no women in the economics faculty at Harvard. In 1966 Carter became the first assistant professor of the Harvard Economics Department but,...

The way the expresssion "applied economics" was employed changed deeply from one author to another. In this article we examine the meaning of this concept in Leon Walras' and Wassily Leontief's works regarding mathematical models of general interdependence and general equilibrium. It appears...

Input-output analysis was a particular way of state intervention. Its success was due to the connection of a theory to a model and to an instrument. It was a tool for science and for action. This articulation of an explanatory, a descriptive and a prescriptive dimension may be understood as an...

From the 1930s, Leontief defended the validity of input-output analysis on the basis of a very specific epistemology: operationalism. Operationalism was not proper to Leontief but it was a common epistemological reference from the 1930s to the 1950s –especially about the status of scientific...

Ragnar Frisch wrote in 1933 that "The complete macrodynamic problem, as I conceive of it, consists in describing as realistically as possible the kind of relations that exist between the various magnitudes in the Tableau Economique ., and from the nature of these relations to explain the...

Social Economy and Sustainable economics are two independent fields that sometimes refer one to another. The former is primarily concerned with “social capital” issues, while the latter deal with “natural capital” stakes. When referring to the other field, there is no systematic analysis...

We analyze a series of macroeconometric models developed in the years of high theory by Marschak, Frisch and Leontief. These models share an explanation of growth, cycles and fluctuations (“economic change”) based on the analysis of the circulation of capital goods among producers. They...