Economia politica: stato attuale e prospettive (Political economy: present state and future perspecives)

In the present state of the economics debate, the study of the history of this science is more necessary than ever. On the one hand, the economists’ ‘toolbox’ is growing but, on the other hand, the opposition between the advocates of self-adjusting market equilibrium, and those who, mainly inspired by Keynes, highlight its failures, remains unchanged. Economists seem sometimes sensible to fashions, as in the case of growth theory. Here, despite Pasinetti’s victory in the controversy on capital, the aggregate production function is still in use, and neoclassical economists simply react by shifting their attention on other topics. In macroeconomic theory, the lack of realism of the basic neoclassical model is ever increasing, whereas Keynesian economists, despite divisions in their camp, keep warning that uncertainty, the non-neutrality of money, unemployment and price-wage rigidities make the neoclassical confidence in spontaneous self-adjustment quite hard to believe. The proposal of a new neoclassical synthesis, launched by some Keynesian economists, met no success amongst American mainstream economists, as well as amongst heterodox economists of various creed. In microeconomic research some appreciable results have been obtained, although in many cases the theory is scarcely applicable to the analysis of the real economy. This is often due to over-formalisation, lack of realism, and dubious rationality assumptions. As to the future, a more intense double-way collaboration between economists, social scientists and natural scientists is required if we want to provide solutions to the problems of development and globalisation.