Paul Samuelson
Quotes From
“Parable and Realism in Capital Theory: The Surrogate Production Function” (1962)
- Because of a Gresham’s Law that operates in economics, one’s easier expositions get more readers than one’s harder. And it is partly for this reason that such simple models or parables do, I think, have considerable heuristic value in giving insights into the fundamentals of interest theory in all its complexities.#
- Solow, in the interest of empirical measurements and approximation, has been willing occasionally to drop his rigorous insistence upon a complex-heterogeneous- capital programming model; instead, by heroic abstraction, he has carried forward the seminal work of Paul H. Douglas on estimating a single production function for society and has had a tremendous influence on analysts of statistical trends in the important macro aggregates of our economy. One might almost say that there are two Solows – the orthodox priest of the MIT school and the busman on a holiday who operates brilliantly and without inhibitions in the rough-and-ready realm of empirical heuristics.#
Posts About
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Unmixing the Metaphors of Austrian Capital Theory
A complement of metaphors inherited from the classical era has held back progress in Austrian capital theory (ACT). In particular, the attachment to circulating capital as the paradigmatic capital good, largely motivated by the business cycle theory, has locked ACT into a nonoperational point-output model of production. This paper draws . . .