Two Open Questions on Lucas’s Research Program in the Early 1970s

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article deals with the misperceptions research program that Lucas enunciated in his article ‘Expectations and the Neutrality of Money’ in 1972. It addresses two main questions about Lucas’s research agenda in the early 1970s from both historical and theoretical perspectives: first, Lucas’s claim to root his research program in neo-Walrasian general equilibrium foundations; second, the way in which Lucas avoids dealing with the difficult issue of money in general equilibrium models. The article discusses the consistency of Lucas’s claims of building macroeconomic theory on general equilibrium foundations in the light of open problems in neo-Walrasian general equilibrium theory and the ‘Hahn question’. In the conclusion, the article proposes a reflection on the importance of conceptual screening in the evaluation of research programs in macroeconomics.