Non-Euclidean geometry and political economy How Jacques Rueff explained unemployment in England (1919-1931)

Adrien Lutz ()
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Adrien Lutz: Université de Lyon, Lyon, F-69007, France ; CNRS, GATE Lyon St Etienne,F-69130 Ecully, France, Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne, F-42000, France

No 1522, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: This paper provides new perspectives on the French liberal economist Jacques Rueff (1896-1978), especially as regards his early writings on unemployment. We aim to show that Rueff distinguishes the root causes of permanent unemployment in England (1919-1931) based upon an interesting reading of non-Euclidean geometry. Controversially, this enables him to locate the cause of unemployment in the stickiness of the wage/price ratio. Hence, arguing that reality remains inaccessible in itself, Rueff focuses on a succession of variables (price, wage, unemployment), supplemented by his concepts of rational ego and the reasoning machine, in order to approach this reality.

Keywords: Rueff; unemployment; real wage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B13 E24 N00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gat:wpaper:1522

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