Statics, Dynamics, and the History of Economic Thought

Esteban Perez Caldentey

Chapter Chapter 5 in Roy Harrod, 2019, pp 215-257 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Roy Harrod thought that his work contributed to affecting a second revolution in economic theory consisting in the substitution of a dynamic theoretical system in place of a static one. He believed that economics could and should be separated into two branches statics and dynamics and that this dichotomy should be the analogue to one existing in classical mechanics. For Harrod, statics and dynamics were a part and parcel of classical economics. With the advent of the Marginalist Revolution in the late nineteenth century, dynamics was excluded from the corpus of economic theory. From then onward, economic theory dedicated its efforts to complete and perfect the static method. The dominance of statics over dynamics also permeated the intertemporal equilibrium approach to economics epitomized in the works of Hayek and Hicks. The Keynesian Revolution did not represent a break with the previous theories. It rather completed and perfected the principles of economic statics and in particular the macro-statics theoretical edifice.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:gtechp:978-1-349-74085-7_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349740857

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-349-74085-7_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Great Thinkers in Economics from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().