Ragnar Frisch's Circulation Planning: a naive attempt of modelling General Equilibrium
DUPONT
Type de document
OUVRAGE SCIENTIFIQUE (OS)
Langue
anglais
Auteur
DUPONT
Résumé / Abstract
This paper investigates the time and the way Ragnar Frisch (1895-1973) decided to use econometric tools and techniques for policy purposes, motivated by the need to put into consideration a general equilibrium approach. Ragnar Frisch is well known for his contribution towards developing econometrics from a heuristic point of view as well as from an institutional one from the mid-1920s onwards. By the mid-1930s, he took an active part in the invention of new methodological and theoretical instruments based on a specific shift from political Economy towards rational Economy. The shift occurs regarding the business cycles analysis. The crucial step represented by the General Equilibrium model developed in the very long and controversial 1934 paper, "Circulation planning", is interesting on two accounts: firstly because Frisch develops his understanding of the economic crisis as a breakdown of the system of exchanges due to monetary causes, and secondly because he advocates to solve the crisis by establishing a central agency in charge of the organisation of an optimal system of exchanges in a Walrasian perspective. The difficulty to deal with such a modelling and the conceptual dead-ends of the 1934 article forced Frisch to abandon for a long period the General Equilibrium approach and lead him to define a specific methodology in the following years in order to be able to implement indirect planning.
Editeur
Cambridge University Press
