 The Debates on the Representative Firm and Increasing Returns: Then and Now (2007)Chapter 2 in The Making of a Post-Keynesian Economist: Cambridge Harvest, 2012, pp 55-83 from Palgrave Macmillan Abstract: Abstract There is something completely archaic yet very modern about the tone and issues of the 1920s debates in the Economic Journal on the representative firm and increasing returns, also often referred to as ‘the cost controversy’.† Then, as now, applied economists, ‘realitics’, as Sir John Clapham called them, and theoretical economists (‘analytics’) were often a race apart who neither properly understood nor appreciated each other’s roles and approaches. Then, as now, views differed on whether or not theory had to be directly applicable in explanations of ‘real world’ observations and much misunderstanding occurred because the separation between logically coherent ‘high theory’ in its own domain and, a separate issue, its direct applicability, was not made by protagonists in an argument. Or, if it were, one side would be concerned with the former, the other with the latter, without either making this understanding explicit. Keywords: Technical Change; Economic Journal; Individual Firm; Imperfect Competition; Neoclassical Theory (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-34865-3_3 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan |
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