Over thirty years ago, Bronfenbrenner characterized Japanese economics in terms of “sectarianism, inbreeding and schizophrenia” (1956, p. 390). This paper explores the validity of these characterizations in relation to the contemporary Japanese scene. The main focus will be an institutional analysis of academic economics as conducted within the Japanese university system.

Oddly enough, my first clear recollection of an encounter with an economic proposition dates from the age of six or seven, when my father (who died suddenly from the pneumonia when I was eight) casually remarked that the Colman Mustard Company derived most of its profits from the residue people left on their plates. Unfortunately at the time I did not appreciate the analytical subtlety of this observation. Nor, I suspect, did my father, who probably only wanted to particularize the familiar maxim: waste not, want not. Nevertheless, the point evidently stayed in my mind, though I cannot claim it as the origin of my subsequent fascination with economics. The evolution of my attitudes to economics will tie considered later. First, however, let me briefly sketch some relevant features of my personal and socio-economic background, which may shed some light on my subsequent intellectual activities.

According to Alfred Marshall, the element of time is the most important and difficult aspect to deal with in the economic analysis. Accordingly, he has placed the concept of time at the core of his economic reasoning, and he has developed a number of analytical tools that allow including time in his analytical framework: most notably, the cœteris paribus pound, the representative firm, and the distinction between short and long periods. However, he encountered an insurmountable impasse when dealing with the real elapsing of time in his static framework: the solution proposed in his Principles of Economics remained, for him, highly unsatisfactory, problematic, and incomplete. The real elapsing of time—unavoidable in his reflections—copes very badly indeed with his analytical construction based on equilibrium. The continuity of time is the element of the Marshallian analysis most quickly criticized and rejected. After him, in the economic analysis, time gradation was rigorously divided into “short” and “long” periods, whereas Marshall’s concerns for the continuity of real time were banished from what was considered a “rigorous” analysis. The main aims of this paper are to frame Marshall’s distinction between short and long periods and to underline those aspects of his contribution that were lost or were substantially simplified in later literature.

Wild price swings following World War I motivated some economists and their allies to start a stable money campaign. John R. Commons joined this campaign, and the story of his participation opens a window into an historical learning episode in which the campaign, though it failed, sparked intellectual efforts and interacted with events in ways that changed beliefs about relations between central bank actions, on the one hand, and unemployment, inflation, and economic growth, on the other. The paper dwells on Commons’ role and on the long learning experience that led participants to conclusions they could not have anticipated when they embarked on their campaign.

The aim of this essay is to assess James Medbery MacKaye’s contribution to socialist thought during the Progressive Era. Largely forgotten today, MacKaye proposed a special version of socialism, which he called “Pantocracy,” based on a peculiar blend of utilitarian and eugenic assumptions. Specifically, MacKaye held that biological fitness mapped to the capacity for happiness—biologically superior individuals possess a greater capacity for happiness—and saw the eugenic breeding of “a being or race of beings capable in the first place of happiness” as a possibility open by the advent of Pantocracy. Incidentally, this essay provides further evidence that the influence of eugenic and racialist beliefs upon the American Progressive Era political economy was so deep-rooted and pervasive that it did cut across traditional ideological boundaries.

In my note on dissent (2004), I emphasized that heterodoxy and dissent had to be defined socially. Given that crucial elements of the social context differ from one society to another, it follows that the meaning and significance of dissent may vary too. Barnett (2006) has pointed out a conclusion I should have drawn explicitly: that my suggestions for thinking about dissent make sense only in Western economics. In the former Soviet Union, as he points out, dissent in economics could not be understood apart from the political situation. The examples he cites illustrate some of the ways in which dissent in Soviet economics differed from that in the West, where there was no officially sanctioned orthodoxy comparable to Marxism-Leninism (or rather to what the Soviet authorities chose to call by that name) from which economists wished either safely to signal their dissent or to which they wished, despite their dissent, to be seen to adhere. We see here, it might be argued, a simple difference between two types of society.

Keynes abandoned the theoretical approach used in the Treatise on Money, the fundamental equations approach, very soon after publishing the Treatise. One reason why he may have done so is discussed in this paper. Twice in 1931 someone pointed out to Keynes a third fundamental equation, one for the price of investment goods, an equation Keynes had not developed in the Treatise. This third fundamental equation may have shown Keynes that his fundamental equation approach may not be promising or fruitful.

Léon Walras was a truly revolutionary economist. Not only did he leave a lasting mark on economic doctrine participating in the Marginalist Revolution, which supplanted the labor theory of value of the classical school, but he also contributed to major changes in economic methodology as being one of the first and most ardent promoters of the use of mathematics in economics. For an actor who played such a great role in the development of economics, how did he conceive his scientific endeavor? This question can be broken down into two different but related questions: First, how did he know that he had found true scientific laws? What was his theory of knowledge? Is it best described as empiricist (claiming that all knowledge comes from experience) or idealist (claiming that reason can achieve knowledge independently of experience)? And, second, what relation did his writings on pure theory bear with his policy prescriptions? Was there a normative bias in Léon Walras's methodology, i.e., were his positive statements molded by his normative inclinations?

This last set of questions has generated much debate, given that Walras actively fought for scientific rigor while not refraining from defending his views on the desired social order. For W. Jaffé, who unearthed his correspondence, a careful study of primary evidence shows that Walras's conception of justice heavily influenced his search for pure truth. The Éléments d'économie politique pure (Éléments), “appears, on the surface, as a competely wert-frei” system, but it is nevertheless “inform[ed]” by “implicit moral convictions” (Jaffé 1977, p. 371). However, D. A. Walker has strongly attacked Jaffe's allegation that Walras's theory of general equilibrium was deliberately constructed as a normative scheme, pointing to Walras's “careful distinctions between normative and positive subject matters” (Walker 1984, p. 466).

This paper re-examines Dennis Robertson’s ‘real’ business cycle (RBC) theory outlined in his 1915 A Study in Industrial Fluctuation. Even if, for Robertson, cycles find their origin and respond to oscillations in entrepreneurs’ “rational inducement” to invest, in opposition to RBC models in which every outcome is by construction an equilibrium outcome, Robertson discusses in a traditional way the short-run consequences of such exogenous technological shocks. There are no intertemporal equilibrium phenomena in the sense of the RBC approach; cycle theory is organized, for Robertson, around a Marshallian-defined center of gravity (or long-run equilibrium state of rest). For him, the real forces are represented by the gestation period of investment, but also by investment’s durability, its imperfect divisibility, and, allied with these, its intractability. These features of investment lead to excessive outlays upon capital investment, which ultimately depresses their marginal productivity. The inevitable and rational result is a downturn in the capital goods industries and the onset of a cycle.

Allin Cottrell's criticisms of my paper fall into three general categories: criticisms of the paper I did not write, criticisms of the paper I claimed to write, and criticisms of the paper he thinks I was really writing. Let me try to address each of these categories, emphasizing the more substantive points he raises about the paper I claimed to write.