Conceptualizing the formation and role of expectations before 1950: George Katona's thought

Pierrick Dechaux ()
Additional contact information
Pierrick Dechaux: Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, https://centredeconomiesorbonne.univ-paris1.fr

Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne

Abstract: This article analyzes Katona's theory of expectations and compares it to that of Keynes and Hicks. It discusses the implicit and explicit debates on the introduction of psychology in economic theory. The aim of this paper is twofold: define Katona's thought and examine the impact of this work on the debate on expectations in macroeconomics. This paper shows that Katona is the only author, to our knowledge, who develops both an empirical and theoretical research program on expectations that borrows from the epistemology of Keynes. While rediscovering Katona's work, this paper contributes to highlight the forgotten methodology that initiated the construction of confidence (or sentiment) indexes. It also discusses the implicit and explicit debates on the introduction of psychology in economic theory

Keywords: George Katona; Keynes; Hicks; Psychology; Expectations theories; Expectations measures; Macroeconomics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B22 D84 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2015-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hpe
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://mse.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/CES2015/15010.pdf (application/pdf)

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:mse:cesdoc:15010

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucie Label ().