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The long run fallacy

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The long run fallacy It appears to me that one great cause of our difference in opinion, on the subjects which we have so often discussed, is that you have always in your mind the immediate and temporary effects of particular changes—whereas I put these immediate and temporary effects quite aside, and fix my whole attention on the permanent state of things which will result from them. Letter from Ricardo to Malthus January 1817 On this issue Keynes agreed with Malthus, and it was probably the debate between Ricardo and Malthus that Keynes was thinking about when he formulated his most well-known aphorism, in A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923): But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.

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The long run fallacy

It appears to me that one great cause of our difference in opinion, on the subjects which we have so often discussed, is that you have always in your mind the immediate and temporary effects of particular changes—whereas I put these immediate and temporary effects quite aside, and fix my whole attention on the permanent state of things which will result from them.

Letter from Ricardo to Malthus January 1817

The long run fallacyOn this issue Keynes agreed with Malthus, and it was probably the debate between Ricardo and Malthus that Keynes was thinking about when he formulated his most well-known aphorism, in A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923):

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.

Lars Pålsson Syll
Professor at Malmö University. Primary research interest - the philosophy, history and methodology of economics.

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