Cambridge Tradition Research Articles

One Hundred Years Ago. Keynes’s A Tract on Monetary Reform

Keynes’s General Theory is the basis of how we think about fiscal policy today, having displaced the Gladstonian view of what constituted sound finance. His earlier Tract on Monetary Reform, written a century ago, advocated what is now the standard form of monetary policy, varying interest rates to target domestic prices rather than a fixed exchange rate. But it was less influential at the time than was the General Theory. The Tract was also less theoretically innovative, being based on the Cambridge tradition of the quantity theory of money.

Chris Freeman forging the evolution of evolutionary economics

AbstractEvery Schumpeterian is an evolutionary economist in his or her own way. Chris Freeman, whose 1995 essay is published in this issue of ICC, favored a rare combination of the Cambridge tradition, a Marxian view of inequalities and Schumpeter’s fascination with innovation as the driving force of capitalism. The article summarizes and discusses this combination and how Freeman generated a challenging agenda for contemporary economics, namely in the context of long wave analysis, the theme for his last book.

“The Cambridge Tradition” Reconsidered

Review Article| December 01 2018 “The Cambridge Tradition” Reconsidered The Palgrave Companion to Cambridge Economics. 2 vols. Edited by Cord, Robert A.London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. xvii; 1225 pp. $264.00. Nahid Aslanbeigui; Nahid Aslanbeigui Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Guy Oakes Guy Oakes Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (2018) 50 (4): 777–788. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-7202560 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Nahid Aslanbeigui, Guy Oakes; “The Cambridge Tradition” Reconsidered. History of Political Economy 1 December 2018; 50 (4): 777–788. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-7202560 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsHistory of Political Economy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2018 Duke University Press2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Review Essays You do not currently have access to this content.

Ian Kumekawa. The First Serious Optimist. A.C. Pigou and the Birth of Welfare Economics. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ)2017. x, 332 pp. Ill. $35.00; £27.95.

markdownabstractOverall, it is clear that in Kumekawa Pigou has found a very sympathetic biographer, who writes in the best Cambridge tradition of Quentin Skinner: the book is rich in intellectual history and context. The flipside is that virtually no attempt is made to rationally reconstruct ideas, or even to explain the technicalities of Pigou’s theoretical contributions in modern (economic) language. This Cambridge style also means that the book is written in elegant, “gentlemanly” prose, that tends to smooth out the rough edges, if not indeed, as in the case of these supposed myths, to brush over them completely. And the modern reader cannot help but be frustrated when Pigou is again off on one of his many hikes or other outdoor activities, while important academic and political work awaits him. Kumekawa instead is endlessly patient with his subject, and is sympathetic to Pigou almost to a fault.

Sen’s Economics in The Idea of Justice: Induction vs Deduction

ABSTRACTIn The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen revealingly differentiates his capability approach from the mainstream in terms of structure: comparative vis-à-vis transcendental. Instead of constructing models based on fundamental principles and questing for perfection, Sen seeks to compare feasible options and to choose one from among them. What lies behind this strategy is respect for a plurality of values and reasoning in society. In this context, description plays a key role in this approach, given that plural values and reasoning can be reflected only in an inductive manner which requires rich description. The purpose of this article is to examine how Sen’s approach is related to the Cambridge tradition, which typically embraces inductive methods of reasoning, with a particular focus on the influence of Maurice Dobb. In relation to this, some possible extensions of his approach will be discussed.

The Cambridge history of the Second World War

Following on from earlier three-volume histories of the Cold War and the First World War, Cambridge University Press completes a trilogy with this detailed treatment of the Second World War. Multi-authored in the Cambridge tradition, the individual chapters cover a wide range of events and topics and the 81 contributors, mainly but not exclusively from the United Kingdom and the United States, include both scholars who have already established a reputation in the subject as well as those who are in the process of doing so. Perhaps the greatest strength of the volumes is the treatment given to what may be loosely referred to as the Pacific War. No one who uses them properly is going to have any doubts about the nature and importance of the struggle between Japan and its opponents between 1937 and 1945, and it is particularly encouraging to note the use of Chinese and Japanese sources by the authors, when so many English-language books on the subject cite none. The principal weakness of the enterprise is its division into an unnecessarily complicated series of topics, which is not always adhered to by the authors and which often compels the unfortunate reader to skip backwards and forwards, not only within but between volumes. Despite this flaw, however, this remains an important contribution to the history of the Second World War and will need to be consulted by any serious student of the subject for many years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Path Through the Wilderness: Time Discounting in Growth Models

Although economists have recognized long ago that enters into all economic questions, the ways they treated and modeled time has varied substantially in the last century. While in the 1930s there was a distinctive Cambridge tradition against discounting utilities of future generations, to which Frank Ramsey subscribed, postwar neoclassical growth economists (of the Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model) applied the discount factor either to individual’s or to social planner’s decision-making as a technical requirement of dynamic general equilibrium models. My goal in this article is to shed some historical light on how a practice that was condemned as ethically indefensible when applied to intergenerational comparisons became a technical requirement in dynamic models of either a consumer or a planner deciding the intertemporal allocation of resources.

A Path Through the Wilderness: Time Discounting in Growth Models

Although economists recognized long ago that “time enters into all economic questions,” as William Stanley Jevons wrote, the ways they treated and modeled time varied substantially in the last century. While in the 1920s there was a distinctive Cambridge tradition against discounting utilities of future generations, to which Frank Ramsey subscribed, postwar neoclassical growth economists (of the “Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model”) applied the discount factor either to the individual's or the social planner's decision making as a technical requirement of dynamic general equilibrium models. My goal in this article is to analyze the different communities and their interpretative practices regarding discounting: the Cambridge economists in the 1920s, some American mathematicians in the 1920s and 1930s, a group of economists working on economic dynamics from the 1930s to the 1950s, the founders of the optimal growth model and those bringing recursive methods to macroeconomics in the 1950s and 1960s, and, finally, those who reacted against this utilitarian approach to social planning problems. With this I hope to shed some historical light on how a practice that was condemned as ethically indefensible when applied to intergenerational comparisons became a technical requirement in dynamic models of either a consumer or a planner deciding the intertemporal allocation of resources.

The contemporary relevance of a Cambridge tradition: economics as political economy, political economy as social theory and ethical theory

In this review essay I set out key aspects of Nuno Martins’ The Cambridge Revival of Political Economy. In so doing I also provide some comments on the current state of economics, since these provide some context for an appreciation of what Martins is trying to achieve. Martins is focused on making the positive case for classical political economy (CPE) as a form of theory that is quite different from the modern mainstream. For Martins that difference is based on its approach to the distribution of a surplus expressed through a social ontology that is based on historical open systems and in which the key aspect of open systems is the institutional and hence deliberative activity by which the surplus is decided, which is ultimately an issue for ethics. It is through a ‘Cambridge tradition’, focusing on Sraffa, Keynes, Lawson and Sen, that CPE, a classical social theory and ethical deliberation are brought together. Bringing them together is an act of synthesis and I conclude by providing a constructive critique of the terms of this synthesis.

Economists and the Analysis of Government Failure: Fallacies in the Chicago and Virginia Interpretations of Cambridge Welfare Economics

The theory of government failure was developed as a reaction against Pigovian welfare economics and the Cambridge approach to economic policy analysis generally, which ostensibly lacked a theory of governmental behavior. We argue that the Cambridge tradition — as reflected in the writings of Henry Sidgwick, Alfred Marshall, and A.C. Pigou — evidences a clear sense for the potential limitations and inefficiencies of the political process that were later developed, albeit in more systematic fashion, in the government failure literature and at the same time bring out the ways in which the Cambridge and contemporary government failure approaches diverge, in spite of their strong similarities.

Economists and the analysis of government failure: fallacies in the Chicago and Virginia interpretations of Cambridge welfare economics

The theory of government failure was developed as a reaction against Pigovian welfare economics and the Cambridge approach to economic policy analysis generally, which ostensibly lacked a theory of governmental behaviour. We argue that the Cambridge tradition--as reflected in the writings of Henry Sidgwick, Alfred Marshall and A.C. Pigou--evidences a clear sense of the potential limitations and inefficiencies of the political process that were later developed, albeit in a more systematic fashion, in the government failure literature and at the same time bring out the ways in which the Cambridge and contemporary government failure approaches diverge, in spite of their strong similarities. Copyright The Authors 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

The Revival of Classical Political Economy and the Cambridge Tradition: From Scarcity Theory to Surplus Theory

Hilary Putnam and Vivian Walsh argue that Amartya Sen's contribution can, like the writings of Piero Sraffa, be best interpreted as a revival of classical political economy, in which Sen brings back into economics a richer conception of the human agent, and a moral dimension. Sen criticises the conception of rationality that underpins mainstream microeconomic theory, and suggests an alternative framework that can accommodate a variety of motivations, including moral motivations, as will be argued here. Furthermore, the work of Sen, and other authors of the Cambridge tradition who also devoted much time to the revival of classical political economy, are complementary in many respects, and provide the basic tools for an alternative economic theory, which is centred on the economic, social and ethical analysis of the production and distribution of the economic surplus, and not on the modelling of the activity of optimising agents in a context of scarcity. While the notion of scarcity is very important for the analysis of poverty and deprivation that Sen undertakes, the central issue to address, in order to explain the causal mechanisms behind scarcity, poverty and deprivation, concerns the study of the production and distribution of the economic surplus.

The ‘Happiness transformation problem’ in the Cambridge tradition

The paper claims that in the leaders of the Cambridge tradition of economics the issue of the ‘happiness transformation problem’, i.e. how wealth becomes well-being, was a central point. In particular, the author shows that from Malthus to Pigou this economic tradition paid special attention to non-economic domains important for human happiness and that are affected by market choices. Marshall is seen as the bridge between the classical reflection on happiness in the eighteenth century and the recent debates on the ‘paradoxes of happiness’, an issue that is becoming more and more important, not only in moral philosophy, but also in economics.

Pigou and future generations: a Cambridge tradition

In The Economics of Welfare and elsewhere, A. C. Pigou took the view that future people should be treated equally with present people. He stressed our defective telescopic faculty, mortality, and weak linkages over time and argued that the present generation would consequently devote too few resources to investment, particularly in human capital. Pigou linked his argument with the then contemporary controversies about natural resource conservation and about eugenics. This 'Cambridge tradition' holds that issues of generational justice leave an important role for the state and cannot be resolved simply at the level of the individual or the family. (c) 1996 Academic Press Limited Copyright 1996 by Oxford University Press.

Hollander’s Ricardo

Samuel Hollander's impressive book The Economics of David Ricardo (1979a) is culmination of many papers (1971, 1973b, 1975, 1977a, 1977b, 1977c, 1979b, Hicks and Hollander, 1977). It is also a sequel to his book on Adam Smith (1973). It is intended to be the definitive work for decades (according to publisher's description) and part of a far-reaching reconstruction of history of economic thought. Hollander's Ricardo stresses interdependence of distributive and pricing problems, and market as an allocative mechanism. Ricardo emerges as fully integrated in tradition of general equilibrium theorists, descending from Adam Smith to neoclassical writers. This assessment challenges view of Sraffa (and current neo-Ricardian or Cambridge tradition) in his edition of Ricardo's Works and Correspondence (1951 and seq.) and restores previous judgment of Alfred Marshall (1961, appendix I). On this basis history of economic thought would appear as a continuous homogeneous line, centered on market as an allocative mechanism and revolving around supply-and-demand equilibrium and general interdependence. Hollander's views dispute, therefore, any clear-cut distinction (methodological, conceptual, and analytical) between classical political economy and neoclassical marginalist economics. For Hollander, if dividing lines are introduced, they should separate

Geology at the University of Sheffield: Prof. W. G. Fearnsides, F.R.S

NOT a few of the younger generation of geologists will learn with surprise of the retirement of Prof. W. G. Fearnsides from the Sorby chair of geology at the University of Sheffield. They will have ample ground for wonder whether anyone so patently young can have reached the age at which university professors retire, though the surprise may be lessened by the discovery that he has held the chair since its foundation thirty-two years ago, and consolation will follow the thought that geology still has the promise of his enthusiasm and energy for many years to come. Under McKenney Hughes, as a colleague of Alfred Harker, J. E. Marr, Henry Woods and Gertrude Elles, he commenced his geological career in some of the brightest days of the Cambridge school. It is not surprising that some of his earliest claims to distinction were notable contributions in the Cambridge tradition of Lower Palæozoic geology, while his characteristic versatility was foreshadowed by his concern at the same time with the teaching of petrology and the collection of quaternary bones. During this period he was a fellow of Sidney Sussex College.

Economic Theory and Economic Policy

SPECIAL attention is merited by Dr. Walker's new book.2 It is the work of a leading Australian economist with a distinguished career as teacher and adviser to various public bodies. Dr. Walker's academic stature resembles that of J. B. Condliffe and A. G. B. Fisher, to name only a few of those economists whose work accounts for much what by now has become a sort of Australian tradition in economic thinking. This Australian school has always maintained contact with the great Cambridge tradition but was, in its most notable exponents, never completely identifiable with it. Whatever may have been the reasons for its differentiation-distance and detachment, individuality, and the special problems of a new science in a new country-the Australian school's eminent realism and practical common sense seem to be its most outstanding characteristics. It may be that an especially pleasant reality has prevented the fanciful flights which neoclassical economics on occasion has taken in a less favorable climate.