IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-230-34865-3_3.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Debates on the Representative Firm and Increasing Returns: Then and Now (2007)

In: The Making of a Post-Keynesian Economist: Cambridge Harvest

Author

Listed:
  • G C Harcourt

    (University of Cambridge
    Jesus College
    University of Adelaide
    University of New South Wales)

Abstract

There is something completely archaic yet very modern about the tone and issues of the 1920s debates in the Economic Journal on the representative firm and increasing returns, also often referred to as ‘the cost controversy’.† Then, as now, applied economists, ‘realitics’, as Sir John Clapham called them, and theoretical economists (‘analytics’) were often a race apart who neither properly understood nor appreciated each other’s roles and approaches. Then, as now, views differed on whether or not theory had to be directly applicable in explanations of ‘real world’ observations and much misunderstanding occurred because the separation between logically coherent ‘high theory’ in its own domain and, a separate issue, its direct applicability, was not made by protagonists in an argument. Or, if it were, one side would be concerned with the former, the other with the latter, without either making this understanding explicit.

Suggested Citation

  • G C Harcourt, 2012. "The Debates on the Representative Firm and Increasing Returns: Then and Now (2007)," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Making of a Post-Keynesian Economist: Cambridge Harvest, chapter 2, pages 55-83, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-34865-3_3
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230348653_3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-34865-3_3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.