Allyn Young’s Role as a Critic: Criticism as a Method to Advance Theory

Ramesh Chandra

Journal of Economic Issues, 2022, vol. 56, issue 4, 1168-1188

Abstract: Allyn Young’s wide knowledge of the economics literature placed him in an ideal position to critically review the work of others. His own attitude was that the discipline of economics was wide open for criticism, improvement, and refinement. He reviewed (or commented on) many authors such as William Stanley Jevons, Alfred Marshall, Arthur C. Pigou, Ralph G. Hawtrey, Irving Fisher, Francis Y. Edgeworth, Thorstein Veblen, Joseph Schumpeter, and John Maynard Keynes. Young used criticism as a method to advance and refine economic theory. For example, he criticized Marshall’s notion of consumers’ surplus and Pigou’s on social cost. He engaged in a long correspondence with Fisher on the theory of index numbers. He disagreed with Fisher that the general price level needed stabilizing. Young agreed with Veblen that economics needed an evolutionary approach and could be more fruitfully studied in terms of disequilibrium and cumulative causation, but disagreed that the discipline was based on a hedonistic psychology.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1080/00213624.2022.2123654

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