James Anthony Lawson on commercial panics and their recurrence

Daniele Besomi

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 2008, vol. 19, issue 4, 330-341

Abstract: In a paper read in 1848 before the Dublin Statistical Society, James Anthony Lawson propounded a theory of commercial crises based on a credit-overtrading-speculation mechanism. This view was quite widespread at the time, but it was couched in an original reinterpretation of the causal relationships. Lawson's epistemic premise that laws must be universal and that similar causes must entail similar effects implied that crises were no longer seen as disconnected events but as instances of the same class of events. This was one of the most important ingredients in the transition from the theories of crises towards theories of the business cycle.

Keywords: Business; cycles; Instability; Causality; Crises (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0954-349X(08)00041-6
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:streco:v:19:y:2008:i:4:p:330-341

Access Statistics for this article

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics is currently edited by F. Duchin, H. Hagemann, M. Landesmann, R. Scazzieri, A. Steenge and B. Verspagen

More articles in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().