A Journey into Harold Hotelling’s Economics

Marion Gaspard (), Antoine Missemer () and Thomas Mueller
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Marion Gaspard: TRIANGLE - Triangle : action, discours, pensée politique et économique - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - Université de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - IEP Lyon - Sciences Po Lyon - Institut d'études politiques de Lyon - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2
Antoine Missemer: CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Harold Hotelling (1895-1973) was a major contributor to twentieth-century American economics. The overall thrust of his research, and his view of the role of mathematics in the discipline, have so far received little attention. Based on an unprecedented examination of his work and professional archives, this article provides a thorough analysis of Hotelling's background and contribution to economics. A self-taught economist in the 1920s, Hotelling built a research program that, despite apparently being highly technical, was primarily conceived as applied science to solve concrete social and economic issues, from spatial competition to natural resource exhaustion and public utility regulation. Although Hotelling's research was not exempt from criticism, it remains profoundly inspiring for the twenty-first century, from both a theoretical and epistemological point of view. When we remember that he trained the greatest, from Kenneth J. Arrow to William Vickrey, his career and ideas are all the more worthy of consideration.

Keywords: Hotelling; History of economic thought; natural resource economics; spatial competition; welfare economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://enpc.hal.science/hal-04840070v1
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Published in Journal of Economic Literature, 2024, 62 (3), pp.1186-1212. ⟨10.1257/jel.20231700⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04840070

DOI: 10.1257/jel.20231700

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