Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

I first became aware of David Graeber as a poster on Usenet back in the 1990s. Many people who have succeeded in this world have no interest in conducting honest discussions. I found some places where one could have cheerful talk, including with harsh disagreement. And I found other places not so much. I probably fit in with the latter. Sometime in November 1998, a thread arose, "A Donaldism for David Friedman". David Friedman is Milton's son and also promotes plutocracy under the guise...

1.0 Introduction Piero Sraffa wrote down his 'first equations' in 1927, for an economy without a surplus. D3/12/5 starts with these equations for an economy with three produced commodities. I always thought that they did not make dimensional sense, but Garegnani (2005) argues otherwise. This post details Garegnani's argument, albeit with my own notation. There are arguments about how and why Sraffa started on his research project I do not address here. The question is how did he relate...

Paul Graham jokingly asks, "What phrase signals that the person using it doesn't understand your field?" Stephen Gordon and Alex Tabarrok both respond with "Neoclassical economics". Jamie Morgan (ed.) (2016) What is Neoclassical Economics? Debating the Origins, Meaning, and Significance, New York: Routledge. R. Robert Russell and Maurice Wilkinson (1979). Microeconomics: A Synthesis of Modern and Neoclassical Theory, New York: John Wiley.

I have a new working paper. The article presents previously unpublished material from file D13/12/111 in Sraffa's archives. In particular, it reproduces an English translation of Aurelio Macchioro's review in Annali dell'Istituto Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, a summary by Christopher Bliss of a paper that he read to the Cambridge Political Economy Club, a draft response by James Meade, a rejected paper on Marx by Vittorio Volterra and Moshe Machover, and a paper on the subsistence economy by...

"Typically 2 the integer is used for counting, whereas 2 the real number is used for measuring. But in higher mathematics there's a technical sense in which integers aren't real numbers -- we say instead that they can be identified with real numbers." -- Timothy Gowers 1.0 Introduction Numbers, in some sense, are only defined in mathematics up to isomorphisms. This post runs quickly through some math to explain what this means. I begin by assuming knowledge of the natural numbers,...

These seem to be resources for providing the student with an overview of schools of thought, fields, and the history of economics. Exploring Economics is set up by the Network for Pluralist Economics. Here is their overview of Post Keynesianism. Economics Education is a webpage "built by Sam de Muijnck and Joris Tieleman of Rethinking Economics Netherlands." Here is their page on feminist economics. Here is their page on Post Keynesian economics. This is their page on (original)...

Zach Carter's The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, amd the Life of John Maynard Keynes. James Crotty's Keynes Against Capitalism: His Economic Case for Liberal Socialism. Stephanie Kelton's The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy. Stephen Marglin's to-be-published Raising Keynes: A Twenty-First-Century General Theory. I think his earlier Growth, Distribution, and Prices parallels Donald Harris' even earlier Capital Accumulation and Income...

"One must be able to say at all times - instead of points, straight lines, and planes -- tables, chairs, and beer mugs." -- David Hilbert (as quoted by Constance Reid, Hilbert, Springer-Verlag, 1970: p. 57) Consider the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ... The first two terms in this sequence are 1 and 2. After this, each term is the arithmetic sum of the previous two terms. Let A be the set of elements in this series. Let s be the function mapping an element in A onto another...

... If you speak of a revolution in mathematics, you are likely to be treated to the ironic response, "Oh, so two and two now make five?" We can answer: "Why not? Suppose we ask for the delivery of two articles each weighing two pounds; they are delivered in a box weighing one pound; then in this package two pounds and two pounds will make five pounds!" "But you get five pounds by adding three weights, 2 and 2 and 1."" "True, our operation '2 and 2 make 5' is not an addition in the...

I have long been convinced that many mainstream economists, however they performed under hazing, do not understand mathematics. "T. C. Koopmans, perhaps the greatest defender of the use of the mathematical tool in economics, countered the criticism of the exaggeration of mathematical symbolism by claiming that the critics have not come forward with specific complaints. The occasion was a symposium held in 1954 around a protest by David Novick. But, by an irony of fate, some twenty years...