The intriguing pendulum : founding metaphors and persuasion in the analysis of economic fluctuations

• Autor(a) principal: Louçã, Francisco
• Data de Publicação: 1997
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/22710
• topic: General Theory; Methodology; Equilibrium in Economics; Econometric; Economic History

The paper is an inquiry into the definition of the early econometric program and the conditions for the introduction of the probability approach in economics, namely the discussions Frisch and Schumpeter held from the late twenties through the early thirties about the adequate model to represent innovations, change and equilibrium in economics. The argument and the framework are briefly presented in the first section. The 1931 intense correspondence on the matter is discussed in the second section. It provides a magnificent example of the importance of rhetorics in economics, of the role of constitutive metaphors in a research program and of the difficulties to define the adequate mathematical formalism to deal with cycles and structural change. The third section presents the conclusion of the story, the bifurcation between the resulting contributions by Frisch (1933) and by Schumpeter (1939, and the posthumous volume of 1954 ). The paper is based upon still unpublished papers that were found at Frisch's Collections (Oslo University Library and Frisch's Rommet at the Institute of Economics) and Schumpeter's Collection (Harvard University). Joseph Schumpeter' s main contribution to economics was a passionate defence of the historical approach to cycles and to the dynamics of capitalism. Although a stubborn supporter of the use of mathematics, a founder of the Econometric Society in 1930 and the writer of a crucial paper in the first issue of Econometrica presenting its antecedents and program, Schumpeter distinguished himself as an intensely dedicated researcher in the field of concrete historical processes. He became eventually the most quoted economist in the first decades of the century, until the glamorous triumph of Keynes' General Theory. Schumpeter's main publications are historical in the sense of applied historical and conceptual work (Business Cycles, 1939), of a polemic interpretation of the historical trends (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942) and of a historical account of the science itself (History of Economic Analysis, posthumously published in 1954 ). His single most important contribution, and indeed the reason for contemporary attention in relation to his work and inspiration, was the analysis of innovation, of creative destruction and of disequilibrium processes in moderncapitalism. This paper presents an important and ignored discussion which contributed to the definition of Schumpeter' s concept of innovation, challenging his own definition from the view point of the requirements for an econometric approach to cycles and to economic structural change, as presented by his close friend Ragnar Frisch. It also highlights the crucial importance of metaphors - the rocking horse, the pendulum, the violin, and the Magallenic Oceans - both for persuasion and for concrete representation and abductive creation of new hypotheses in economics. .