Dynamic Optimization Under Uncertainty: Non-convex Feasible Set

An editorial note in the Economic Journal (May 1930) reported the death of Frank Ramsey, and his 1928 paper was described as ‘one of the most remarkable contributions to mathematical economics ever made’. In the same issue the editor organized a symposium on increasing returns and the representative firm. This symposium seems to be a natural follow-up of a number of papers published by the Journal during 1926–8, including the well-known article of Allyn Young (1928) that is still available, and duly remembered. The problems of equilibrium of a firm under increasing returns, or more generally, of designing price-guided resource allocation processes to cope with increasing returns, has since been a topic of continuing interest. Ramsey’s contribution was enshrined as a durable piece with a resurgence of interest in intertemporal economics in the fifties. But neither John Keynes, the editor of the Economic Journal who was most appreciative of Ramsey’s talents, neither the subsequent writers on ‘growth theory’ in Cambridge, England (nor, for that matter, those in Cambridge, Massachusetts), have made any precise suggestion towards incorporating increasing returns in a Ramsey-type exercise.