The Folklore of H. L. Moore on the Demand for Pig Iron

Nancy J. Wulwick

Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 1992, vol. 14, issue 2, 168-188

Abstract: According to the folklore of economics, H. L. Moore (1869–1958) in Economic Cycles: Their Law and Cause (1914) mistakenly called his estimates of the supply of pig iron the demand for pig iron. The reviews of Economic Cycles by R. A. Lehfeldt (1915) and P. G. Wright (1915) initiated the folklore, which G. J. Stigler (1962) repeated in his obituary of Moore. Recently the folklore reappeared in histories of economics by M. Blaug (1986), K. Kim (1988), R. J. Epstein (1989), and M. S. Morgan (1990). Morgan, who was particularly critical of Moore, wrote that his empirical work “produced a relationship which he interpreted as a positive demand curve for pig-iron. This, of course, contradicted the negative relationship between the price and quantity stipulated by standard economic theory…. Moore's approach was a mixture. At its worst, it involved both the unthinking application of theory to data and the adoption of empirically derived relationships without reference to theory” (Morgan 1990, pp. 28, 141).

Date: 1992
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