Modeling Economic Instability

Michaël Assous is a Full Professor of Economics at the Université Lumière Lyon 2, France. Since 2017, Assous has coordinated the research branch focusing on the history of economics at Triangle, a center whose mission is to promote and support research and teaching on the history of economics in France. His principal research interests lie in the history of macroeconomics. His earlier work, much of which focused on the Polish economist Michal Kalecki, dealt with the analytical components of economics. Since his fellowship year at the HOPE Center in 2012–2013, Assous has drawn on the rich resources of the Economists’ Papers Project and used archival material in his research projects on instability and the recent history of macroeconomics, focusing on Robert Solow, Franco Modigliani, Oskar Lange and Paul Samuelson. In 2012, he was awarded the ESHET (European Society of the History of Economic Thought) Young Researcher Award. Vincent Carret isa Ph.D. student at the Université Lumière Lyon 2, where he is working on the history of macroeconomic thought. His thesis focuses on different approaches to stability in models from the interwar to the postwar period. One of his objective is to render the models from that time more accessible through the use of web-based simulations. He has already published papers in the Revue d’Économie Politique, (in collaboration with Michaël Assous, Muriel Dal Pont Legrand and Olivier Bruno), the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought (in collaboration with Michaël Assous) and in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought. Vincent Carret is a visiting researcher at the HOPE Center at Duke University for the year 2021–2022.

“The goal of Assous and Carret is to recover the instability program of the 1930s which occupied especially the European wing of the recently founded Econometric Society. The authors do so in eight concise chapters which focus on significant contributions to the econometric exploration of economic instability. ... The approach of the authors succeeds wonderfully in capturing the (in)stability debates of the 1930s. ... Rational reconstruction is alive and well.” (Erwin Dekker, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 30 (1), 2023)“This book by Michaël Assous and Vincent Carret contains an introduction and eight chapters that can be read independently. … Assous and Carret offer three major contributions, contributions that make their book essential to read. The book’s originality, as well as its analytical strength, lies in the great erudition of the authors and their detailed, technical discussions of several important macroeconomic models. … Some might even regard it as a handbook for a (very educated) audience of eonomists.” (Ariane Dupont-Kieffer, History of Political Economy, Vol. 55 (4), August, 2023)

• Chapter 1. Looking for dynamic economics: Tinbergen’s early breakthrough.- Chapter 2. Relaxation oscillations in the early development of econometrics: a road not taken.- Chapter 3. Frisch’s macro-dynamics: inner stability and external impulses.- Chapter 4. Kalecki’s macro-dynamics: “Automatic cycles,” stagnation and class struggle.- Chapter 5. Tinbergen’s macro-dynamics: Instability and the possibility of collapse.- Chapter 6. Business cycles, pump-priming and the role of public expenditures.- Chapter 7. Stability analysis and early Keynesian systems.- Chapter 8. Full employment and instability: Disentangling issues on existence and stability.