The contribution of Carlo Casarosa on the forerunners of the life cycle hypothesis by Franco Modigliani and Richard Brumberg

Alice Martini () and Luca Spataro
Additional contact information
Alice Martini: University of Pisa

International Review of Economics, 2022, vol. 69, issue 1, No 4, 101 pages

Abstract: Abstract The Italian economist Carlo Casarosa published a study in 2002 claiming that there existed two contributions—one by Roy Harrod (1948, Lecture Two) and one by James Duesenberry (1949, Chapter III, Sect. 9)—that could be considered forerunners of Modigliani and Brumberg’s pioneering works about the Life Cycle Hypothesis (LCH). Those contributions, according to the Italian scholar, had been, until that moment, scarcely known by the scientific community. Particularly, he pointed out that, while Modigliani in 1970 eventually recognized Harrod’s contribution to the LCH, he never mentioned Duesenberry’s work. After presenting and commenting on the content of Casarosa’s investigation, in this paper we present the results of an extended historiographical analysis that we have carried out on the early literature about the LCH. Rather interestingly, our analysis shows that several economists, especially from Cambridge (UK), had acknowledged the role of Harrod (together with the one of Frank Ramsey) since early 1950s, while Duesenberry’s contribution to the LCH was completely ignored.

Keywords: Saving theory; Consumption theory; Economic growth; Life-cycle hypothesis; History of economic thought (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B21 B22 D15 E21 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12232-021-00386-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:inrvec:v:69:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s12232-021-00386-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cy/journal/12232/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s12232-021-00386-w

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Economics is currently edited by Luigino Bruni

More articles in International Review of Economics from Springer, Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().