(In)stability at the Cowles Commission (1939-1948)

Michaël Assous () and Vincent Carret ()
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Michaël Assous: 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
Vincent Carret: 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

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Abstract: Stability analysis touched off extensive discussions at the Cowles Commission between 1939 and 1948. Oskar Lange, later followed by Lawrence Klein and Don Patinkin, among others, advocated for a move from a static analysis aimed at proving the existence of a stationary equilibrium with unemployment towards a dynamic approach exploring stability properties of full employment equilibria. In presence of excess supply of goods and labour with flexible money wages and prices, the message was that macroeconomic pathologies are better regarded as disequilibrium dynamics when full employment equilibrium is unstable \textendash Lange and Klein \textendash or when it is stable \textendash Patinkin. The objective of this paper is to examine this type of modelling and how it provided the basis of a specific political vision shared by most economists of the Cowles Commission in the 1940's.

Keywords: Cowles Commission; Don Patinkin; dynamics; Instability; Lawrence Klein; Oskar Lange; Paul Samuelson (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2020, 27 (4), pp.582-605. ⟨10.1080/09672567.2020.1779775⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-02934177

DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2020.1779775

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