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Towards a Political Economy of the Theory of Economic Policy

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  • K.Vela Velupillai

Abstract

The theory of economic policy, in its mathematical modes, may be said to have had two incarnations, identified in terms of pre-Lucasian and ultra-Lucasian on a time-scale, whose origin can be traced to the Scandinavian works of the 1920s and early 1930s, beginning with Lindahl (1924, 1929), Frisch (1933) and Myrdal (1933). The end - mercifully (meant perversely) - of the ultra-Lucasian period, in Frances Fukuyama senses, might well have been the date of Prescott's Nobel Prize Lecture (Prescott, 2004). The codification of what may be called the `classical' theory of economic policy was initiated in the pioneering formalisations by Frisch (1949, a, b), and Tinbergen (1952), elegantly summarised in Bent Hansen's early, advanced, text book (Hansen, 1955). The launching pads for the ultra-Lucasian period were the Lucas Critique (Lucas, 1975), the elementary saddle-point dynamics based policy ineffectiveness `theorem' in a Rational Expectations context by Sargent and Wallace (1976) and the Dynamic Programming based Time-Invariance proposition in Kydland and Prescott(1977). In this essay I try, first of all, to trace a path of the mathematisation of the theory of economic policy, from this specific origin to the stated culminating point. Secondly, an attempt is made to expose the nature of the Emperor's New (Mathematical) Clothes in which the mathematisation of the theory of economic policy was attired. Finally, it is shown that the obfuscation by the mathematics of efficiency, equilibrium and the fundamental theorems of welfare economics can be dispelled by an enlightened, alternative, mathematisation that makes it possible to resurrect the poetic tradition in economics and ‘connect the prose in us with the passion’ for policy in the manner in which Geoff Harcourt has `connected' them.

Suggested Citation

  • K.Vela Velupillai, 2012. "Towards a Political Economy of the Theory of Economic Policy," ASSRU Discussion Papers 1217, ASSRU - Algorithmic Social Science Research Unit.
  • Handle: RePEc:trn:utwpas:1217
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Harcourt,G. C., 2008. "The Structure of Post-Keynesian Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521067539, July.
    2. K. Vela Velupillai & Stefano Zambelli, 2010. "Computation in Economics," ASSRU Discussion Papers 1001, ASSRU - Algorithmic Social Science Research Unit.
    3. Edward C. Prescott, 2006. "The Transformation of Macroeconomic Policy and Research," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 50(1), pages 3-20, March.
    4. K. Vela Velupillai, 2008. "The Mathematization of Macroeconomics: A Recursive Revolution," Department of Economics Working Papers 0807, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    5. Harcourt,G. C. With contributions by-Name:Cohen,Avi J. With contributions by-Name:Mata,Tiago, 2022. "Some Cambridge Controversies in the Theory of Capital," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781009158152, January.
    6. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-1370, November.
    7. Kumaraswamy Vela Velupillai, 2008. "The Mathematization of Macroeconomics. A Recursive Revolution," Economia politica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 2, pages 283-316.
    8. Olav Bjerkholt, 2009. "Some Unresolved Problems of Mathematical Programming," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Dipak Basu (ed.), Economic Models Methods, Theory and Applications, chapter 1, pages 3-19, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Sargent, Thomas J. & Wallace, Neil, 1976. "Rational expectations and the theory of economic policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 169-183, April.
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