HISTORY OFECONOMIC

IDEAS

XVIII/2010/3

Fabrizio Serra editorePisa · Roma

HEI

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HIST

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ON

OM

ICS ID

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S · XV

III/2010/3

issn1122-8792

electronic issn1724-2169

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HISTORY OF ECONOMIC IDEASHistory of Economic Ideas Online

www.historyofeconomicideas.com

Editors:Riccardo Faucci (University of Pisa)

Roberto Marchionatti (University of Turin)

Editorial Board:Richard Arena (University of Nice), Duccio Cavalieri (University of Flo-rence), Marco Dardi (University of Florence), Peter D. Groenewegen(University of Sydney), Hansjörg Klausinger (University of Vienna), EnzoPesciarelli (University of Ancona), Christian Seidl (University of Kiel)

Advisory Board:M. M. Augello (University of Pisa), G. Becattini (University of Florence),A. A. Brewer (University of Bristol), B. J. Caldwell (Duke University),A. L. Cot (University of Paris i), N. De Vecchi (University of Pavia), R. W.Dimand (Brock University), S. Fiori (University of Turin), G. C. Har-court (University of Cambridge, uk), A. Karayiannis (University of Piraeus), B. Ingrao (University of Rome «La Sapienza»), J. E. King (La TrobeUniversity), S. Perri (University of Macerata), C. Perrotta (University ofLecce), P. L. Porta (University of Milan · Bicocca), T. Raffaelli (Univer -sity of Pisa), A. Salanti (University of Bergamo), W. J. Samuels (Michigan

State University), A. S. Skinner (University of Glasgow),J. K. Whitaker (University of Virginia)

Book Review Editor:Nicola Giocoli (University of Pisa)

Editorial Assistants:Giandomenica Becchio (University of Turin)

Giulia Bianchi (University of Pisa)

Address:The Editor, History of Economic Ideas,

Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Facoltà di Giurisprudenza,Via Curtatone e Montanara 15, i 56126 Pisa,

tel. +39 050 2212845, fax +39 050 2212853, hei@ec.unipi.it

History of Economic Ideas is an international peer-reviewed journal and it is indexed and abstracted in Current Contents/Arts & HumanitiesArt & Humanities Citation Index, , Social Science Citation Index and Journal Citation Report/Social Science Edition (isi · Thomson Reuters). The eContent isarchived with Clockss and Portico.

PAUL A. SAMUELSON (1915-2009):THEORIST, HISTORIAN

AND INTELLECTUAL

Edited byRiccardo Faucci

Soon after hearing of Paul Anthony Samuelson’s death, this journaldecided to dedicate a number of papers to his towering figure as an em-inent theorist, a historian of economic analysis, and a political thinker,spanning through seven decades. To this aim a call for papers waslaunched on the shoe List of the History of Economics Society.

The aim of the present sub-section is therefore that of offering a first,necessarily sketchy, but, hopefully, non-trivial appraisal of Samuelson’sintellectual and scientific impact on contemporary social sciences. Alsoon behalf of hei’s co-editor, Roberto Marchionatti, we wish to thankthe managers of the shoe List and the scholars who promptly answeredour call for papers and contributed the following works.

R. F.

«History of Economic Ideas», xviii/2010/3

PAUL ANTHONY SAMUELSON:HISTORIAN OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT

Steven G. Medema*University of Colorado Denver

andAnthony M. C. Waterman*

St John’s College, Winnipeg

Paul Anthony Samuelson made wide-ranging contributions to scholarship in the history of economic thought over the course of his long professional career, doingso using a distinctive approach to the subject that was both a source of significant insights into the ideas of the past and the subject of controversy. This article discussesthe motivations behind Samuelson’s work in the history of economic thought, bothin terms of subject-matter and approach, with a view toward enhancing our under-standing of his place in this field.

1. The Historianaul Anthony Samuelson once referred, self-disparagingly, to «the5 per cent of my published papers that deal with the history of eco-

nomic science» (54, 3). Yet this amounts to more than seventy articles,essays or memoirs clearly identifiable as history of economic thought(het), appearing over a period of fifty-seven years from 1952 to 2009.Many full-time specialists in this sub-discipline have achieved far less.

Samuelson’s earliest journal articles in het were published in the1950s. But Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947), based on his doctoraldissertation, refers to nearly forty of his more famous forerunners overthe previous two centuries, ranging from Barone, Bastiat, Bentham,Böhm-Bawerk, Bortkiewicz … to Adam Smith, Thünen, Veblen, Viner,Walras, Wicksell and Allyn Young; and including such relatively unex-pected authors as Engels, Paley and Sidgwick. It is characteristic that heshould have chosen to illustrate a purely mathematical conception, thatof «one-sided stability-instability», with Malthus’s population theory(Samuelson 1947, 296-299), so formulating a Malthusian productionfunction, the germ of his famous «Canonical Classical Model» (29).

* Addresses for correspondence: S. G. Medema: Steven.Medema@ucidenver.edu, A. M. C.Waterman: waterman@cc.umanitoba.ca

The authors wish to acknowledge the helpful cooperation of Mrs. Janice Murray of the Mas-sachusetts Institute of Technology, editor of volumes 6 and 7 of Collected Scientific Papers of PaulA. Samuelson now in press. They are grateful to John Singleton for valuable research assistance.

P

68 Steven G. Medema and Anthony M. C. WatermanAmong major figures, only Marx is ignored in Foundations, for whichSamuelson amply made up in later years.

Even in the 1940s, such attention to his predecessors by the author of awork of pure theory was unusual. When Samuelson began graduatestudy at Chicago in 1935, «history of thought was a dying industry» (48, 51);

But it was still a presence in the required curriculum to be reckoned with. Jacob Vinerwas cracking the whip at the University of Chicago. Edwin Seligmann [sic] at Columbia and Jacob Hollander at Johns Hopkins occupied their professorial chairs.

(Ibidem)

Moreover at Harvard in the 1930s, graduate students facing general oralexams were often expected to elucidate developments in analysis madeby important figures back to Adam Smith and before (ibidem). And atmany other universities around the world, possibly because of «thedecadence of literary economics from 1919 to 1930» (ibidem), the studyof theory was intertwined with that of the great theorists to a fargreater extent than is now the case. Thus the sixteen-year old PaulSamuelson was «born again»

at 8:00 a.m., January 2, 1932, when I first walked into the University of Chicago lec-ture hall. That day’s lecture was on Malthus’s theory that human populations wouldreproduce like rabbits until their density per acre of land reduced their wage to a baresubsistence level where an increased death rate came to equal the birth rate. So easywas it to understand all this simple differential equation stuff that I suspected (wrong-ly) that I was missing out on some mysterious complexity.

(Samuelson 2003, 1)

To this «accidental, blind chance» did Samuelson attribute his decisionto study economics.

Samuelson himself believed that the science of economics «burst tolife» shortly after this date in the eruption of four revolutions: «the mo-nopolistic competition revolution, the Keynesian macro revolution, themathematicization revolution, and the econometric inference revolution»(48, 52). The attention of the best economists therefore became fo-cussed on the exciting present. The study of past doctrinal controversywas left to those whom Donald Winch later referred to as «incompetentor retired» practitioners (Winch 1996, 421). How then to explain that fas-cination with economic analysis of the past, and commitment to its elu-cidation, that Samuelson evinced to the end of his life?

As he was mastering the existing corpus of economic theory duringthe 1930s, he came to understand that «some unity of method and logic»underlay most of his researches. Two hypotheses, maximization by ra-tional individuals and stability of market equilibrium (Samuelson 1947,5), were sufficient to unify «much of current and historical economic the-ory» (64, 1377; our italics). The analytical framework of Foundations thus

Paul Anthony Samuelson: Historian of Economic Thought 69had the effect of foreshortening the temporal distance between Samuel-son’s «heroes in economics» – Walras, Cournot, Edgeworth, Pareto,Fisher and Wicksell – and his fellow «working economists» such as J. R.Hicks and Ragnar Frisch (64, 1381). Perhaps for this reason, Samuelsonsometimes wrote as though all the neoclassical masters were in factcontemporaries with whom he was engaged in conversation. As for ear-lier generations from Hume and Smith to J. S. Mill, he habitually main-tained that «within every classical economist there is to be discerned amodern economist trying to be born» (e.g., 29, 598). His discussions ofHeinrich von Thünen (43, 47, 75) recognise «a prophet way ahead of hisown times» who «anticipated the kind of mathematics later employed»by Jevons, Walras, Edgeworth and Pareto (75, 1).

Samuelson’s understanding of the conceptually unitary foundationsof economic analysis, and his confidence in the power of mathematicsto lay bare those foundations, allowed him to analyze a wide range ofseemingly disparate problems with a common technical apparatus, andthus to think of himself as «one of the last generalists in economics»(e.g., csp, 5, 356, 800). His 1979 essay on «Land and the Rate of Interest»is typical. In applying Modigliani’s 1963 life-cycle model to appraise anoff-the-cuff insight of Keynes (1936, 242), it invokes (and formalises) Tur-got’s (1766) analysis, and alludes to Henry George, Frank Ramsay,Böhm-Bawerk, Wicksell, Fisher and Cannan (csp, 5, 344). One of his lastpapers, «Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments ofMainstream Economists Supporting Globalization» (73), affords strik-ing testimony to Samuelson’s perception of the essential contempo-raneity of all good economics. His penchant for hyphenating chrono-logically distant authors, as in «Minkowski-Ricardo-Leontief-Metzlermatrices» (8, 1499) or «Smith-Allyn Young-Ohlin-Krugman trade para-digms» (73, 143), though sometimes half-humorous, was always a trueindex of his unique vision.

Lastly, and closely related to his view of the conceptual unity of eco-nomic analysis, Samuelson’s long-standing devotion to het may havebeen in part simply a consequence of his insatiable appetite for hardwork, a characteristic noted by O’Brien (2007, 336-338) in an article whichis complementary to our own. For seventy years he produced scholarlyarticles at an average rate of nearly one a month, not to mention sever-al books and hundreds of popular pieces in newspapers and magazines.When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970 he remarked that «it wasnice to be recognized for hard work». At the Nobel Banquet Samuelsonlisted five necessary conditions for academic success in his discipline: thefourth condition, «an important one from a scholarly point of view, isthat you must read the works of the great masters». Few other econo-mists have «read the works of the great masters» from Adam Smith to

70 Steven G. Medema and Anthony M. C. WatermanKenneth Arrow with the diligence and penetration of Paul Samuelson.Fewer still have written of this literature so widely or so well.

2. Historiography

Nevertheless, Samuelson occupies a unique and controversial placeamong historians of economics. Because of his vision of the conceptu-al unity of all economic analysis, his historiographic method was sim-ply to formalize the analysis of the past using modern mathematicaltools and theoretical constructs. Contextual elements such as historicalbackground, influences, and ideology – important to most other histo-rians – were ruthlessly ignored.

Samuelson sometimes identified his work as «Whig history», thoughwith qualifications. Others have described it, privately, as an illustrationof its worst excesses. This strikes us as excessively harsh. Samuelsonhimself hoped that «When meeting St Peter my worst crime will be theespousal of a Whig-History approach to the history of science» (54, 3).To understand Samuelson’s contributions to the history of economics,and to apprehend their nature and import, we must appreciate the per-spective that motivated his work.

The starting point is Samuelson’s orthodox view of economics as ascience, and thus of the history of economics as the history of science.But his conception of history of science was very different from thecontemporary approach which focuses on the production of scientificknowledge and its background conditions, sometimes to the exclusionof scientific knowledge itself. Samuelson considered that approach «an-tiquarian», and his own view was roughly 180 degrees opposed:

When I read a Smith or a Keynes, it is the system that they are formulating that firstinterests me – the system discernable there and not primarily their understanding ormisunderstanding of it… The historian of science is interested primarily in the his-tory of various scientific models and understanding…

(54, 7)

Samuelson found antiquarian approaches to the subject problematic:«‘History as it happened’», he wrote, «is neither attainable in principlenor, where the history of a cumulative science is concerned, is it a desir-able end» (54, 5). Sometimes he associated the antiquarian approachwith «gossip» (e.g., 8, 1500). Elsewhere however he took a more charita-ble view: «I applaud those who study history of scholars – their writings, ideologies, influence, and changing reputations». But his ownspecial interest was «in the history of economic theories, models, para-digms, measurements, hypotheses, etc.» (55, 149); which is «in manyways … easier to write precisely because it need not involve the deter-mination of social influencings» (8, 1503).

Paul Anthony Samuelson: Historian of Economic Thought 71But how can one claim to be faithful to the ideas of the past when

merely translating them into modern mathematics, without attendingto what may be crucial contextual elements? Mark Blaug has chargedSamuelson with passing off «rational reconstructions» as «historical re-constructions», against which Samuelson often defended himself(Blaug 1990, 32). He was well aware that we cannot know with certain-ty what an author was thinking when he formulated an idea. Howeverhe observed that writers of the past often «imperfectly understood theirown theories» (48, 56), not least because of limitations of the literaryform in specifying relations and implications. As he wrote to Patinkinin 1990, «I agree that we humans are often imperfect logical machines –particularly in the early stages of discovery and exploration» (55, 150).But for Samuelson this simply required care to avoid over-reaching, notevading analysis of what might be implicit, perhaps even present, in thea past author’s mind:

Truly, I would not want to write, “If A implies B and Cohen asserts that A obtains,then he asserts (and understands) that B does obtain.”…But also, in pursuing mystudy of the history of (A,B, logical relationships, empirical relevances), I’d reproachmyself for failing to recognize when the A’s do imply the B’s.1

(55, 150)

This may not yield true history, but it gives us «the best-case under-standing» of that model (54, 8).2 One can then investigate consistencyand logical correctness in the model, and how it relates to other ideaspast and present.

Samuelson seemed to recognize that there is a fine line between ex-ploring the ideas of the past and abusing them, and was highly criticalof «attempts to read into» the ideas of the past «formalisms that are notthere» (67, 333; see also 54, 10; 48, 56). His own goal was to determine byrigorous probing what could have been there. Of course, such probingcan expose problematic elements in past ideas; and though he consid-ered it «idle to castigate 18th-century writers for not being 20th-centuryvirtuosi», Samuelson also considered it «mandatory to point out theirerrors in describing their own systems and scenarios». This is particu-larly important given that «top modern commentators (Schumpeter,Sraffa, Stigler, Blaug, S. Hollander, Kaldor, Wicksell, …) sometimesshare their errors of omission and commission» (67, 333). If we are«standing on the shoulders of giants», we must be sure that the giant’s

1 Patinkin, for his part, responds that he does not quarrel with Samuelson’s demonstrationthat ideas are implicit in the work of particular scholars; his quarrel goes to «the cerebral dis-tance between the implicit and the explicit, the width of the synaptic gap between the two»(55, 152-153).

2 Samuelson goes on to advocate that the historian of science «should also work out [theauthor’s] worst-case understandings» (54, 8).

72 Steven G. Medema and Anthony M. C. Watermanskeletal structure is not deformed. The work of Ricardo and the treat-ment and use of it by subsequent commentators is a case in point forSamuelson – a subject to which we return in the next section.

While there can be no doubt that Samuelson’s approach has a certainWhiggish character, his is not a classic form of Whig history. Tradi-tional formulation of the concept, owing to Thomas Macaulay, paintsthe present as «the latest and best and final thing» (54, 6). ThoughSamuelson did not reject the Whig label – and at times even embracedit – he saw himself as putting forward a different and better version ofWhig history: «That part of the past which is relevant to the present—that is, relevant to one or more of today’s competing paradigms—is tobe a object of special historical interest». He further suggested that instead of labeling this «Whig history», we might better speak of «history that is given special importance and attention because of its relevance to the present» and that «A good, if ugly, title might be ‘Pre-sentistic history’» (54, 6).

Though cognizant of the idiosyncratic nature of his approach,Samuelson was evangelistic about it, arguing in his 1987 keynote addressto the History of Economics Society that the adoption of his method byother historians of economics offered a possibility of rescuing the fieldfrom the professional wilderness.1 In doing so, Samuelson located thestudy of the history of economics, and the audience for such studies, inthe economics profession rather than within the historical community.In effect the market tests the interest and sensibilities of economists ratherthan historians, and with significant import. For Samuelson consideredscience, including economics, as progressive; and saw a characteristicdifference between science and the humanities in explaining the fact thatthe ideas of period A are eventually replaced by those of period B:A later [scientific] paradigm is likely to be a better paradigm and be more lasting. Einstein’s 1915 system does not so much reject Newton’s 1558 [sic] system as give it adominating generalization. In the creative arts, Shakespeare is not better than Homerbecause he comes later. To think that economics is merely like poetry is both todowngrade it as a serious attempt to be a science and is to grossly misdescribe economics.

(54, 6)

This has implications for the professional acceptance of work done byhistorians of economics, since «working scientists have some contemptfor those historians and philosophers of science who regard efforts inthe past that failed as being on par with those that succeeded, successbeing measurable by latest-day scientific juries who want to utilize hind-sight and ex post knowledge» (54, 52-53).

1 A contrasting view of found in Schabas 1992. See also the responses to Schabas’s argu-ment in the same volume.

Paul Anthony Samuelson: Historian of Economic Thought 73Samuelson was well aware that his approach has not served to raise

the profile of the history of economic science in the larger economicsprofession:

When Samuelson (48) proclaimed a manifesto for Whig history of economic science,the argument was made that old-fashioned antiquarians had lost their market andmaybe something different would sell better. Kurdas reminds me that empirical ex-perience showed that the market for history of economics remains small despite theshift toward using present-day tools in that area.

(54, 12)

Yet he remained unrepentant, and was happy to abandon the markettest and instead make the case for his approach on its intellectual mer-its: that «economics is in some degree a cumulative science», and that«If the study of the past is worth doing, it is worth doing as well as wecan» (54, 12). And that, for Samuelson, meant forsaking antiquarian ap-proaches in favor of a what he considered to be more scientific ap-proach to history.

3. History as polemic

Though economics deals with much that lies at the center of politicalcontroversy, it is orthodox to suppose that economists apply their analy-ses without regard to their ideological commitments. If a strongly ‘left-wing’ economist (e.g., Nancy Folbre) and a strongly ‘right-wing’ econo-mist (e.g., Jennifer Roback Morse) analyze the same problem, they arriveat the same conclusions (see Waterman 2003). In this respect, econo-mists sometimes contrast themselves complacently with other socialscientists.

Paul Samuelson both deeply approved of, and was strongly commit-ted to, this view of economic science. Yet his writing sometimes sug-gests doubt. For example, «It was the tragedy of my teachers’ genera-tion that, as they grew older, economics grew more liberal, and evenradical. It has been the comedy of my era that, as we grew older, ourprofession has become more conservative» (51, 108). But how can eco-nomics possibly be ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’? We must assume that thiswas a slip: for ‘economics’ and ‘our profession’ we should read ‘econo-mists’ and ‘the members of our profession’.

Now if economics be truly scientific, then at any one time all econo-mists ought to be equally ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’, since all have thesame access to the latest and best economic theory, and relevant factsabout the real world, with which to rationalize their normative prefer-ences (Schumpeter 1954, 35-36). Yet this is manifestly not the case, asSamuelson, who never made any secret of his own ‘liberal’ political sen-timents, was well aware.

74 Steven G. Medema and Anthony M. C. Waterman

…around 1970 when I accepted a lecture engagement at the Western Economic Association, I never encountered so unanimous a gang of free marketeers. It was apleasure to see those fellows losing their chips at the rigged gaming tables.

(Ibidem)

Writing in 1983, he reported thatFor a decade now mainstream economics has been moving a bit rightward. But I havenot been tempted to chase it… I have a dream of a human economy that is at thesame time efficient and respecting of personal (if not business) freedoms…

(csp, 5, 355, 790-791)

The movement in «mainstream economics» that Samuelson was leasttempted to chase was the «new classical school that believes in full em-ployment and neutral money even in the short run of a few years. Likeherpes, this condition caught us unawares» (57, 109).

It follows from the orthodox view that ideological differences amongeconomists must be a consequence either of the fact that some are imperfectly acquainted with the best current theory, or because there isdisagreement about the relevant facts, or both. Samuelson was neveroblivious to the latter, and his objections to Chicago School macroeco-nomics were based on the obvious dissonance between its predictionsand what often seems to happen in the real world. But he did very littleempirical work, and his strongest interest always lay in theory. The ele-ment of ideological polemic in his historical writing therefore, consistschiefly in demonstrating the theoretical inadequacy of all attempts toshow that an ‘alternative’ economics might better serve the politicalneeds of left-wing causes than ‘mainstream’ economics. His two prin-cipal targets were Marx and Sraffa. But Dobb, Meek and Morishima, asalso Stigler, Hollander and Blaug – all of whom, in various ways, failedor refused to see the vacuity of much of the Ricardo-Marx analyses –also drew his fire (62, 192). «The real objects of Samuelson’s more heat-ed criticisms were his own time’s contemporaneous historians of eco-nomic thought, rather than ancient heroic scholars» (67, 333).

In view of the bitter attack mounted against him and his economicsby ‘radical’ political economists after 1969, one might have conjecturedthat Samuelson’s sustained critique of Marxian economics was the in-jured response of a man who had prided himself as a progressive andwhose famous textbook was reviled as subversive in 1948, but who wasnow suddenly become «the personification of all that was bad about therunning jackals of capitalism» (63, 159). But his response was temperate,and he saw the New Left as «the continuation of an important strand inthe development of economics» (Samuelson 1971, i). Moreover he hadbegun his studies of Marx «around 1955» (62, 190), twenty-two years be-fore the unwelcome appearance of Anti-Samuelson (Linder 1977), per-

Paul Anthony Samuelson: Historian of Economic Thought 75haps stimulated by Joan Robinson’s brief Essay on Marxian Economics(1942) which he admired and often cited.

No fewer than sixteen out of Samuelson’s seventy-six het papers con-cern Marx (1, 2, 11, 12, 13, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 41, 42, 57, 62), threeof which are replies. At the end of his life their author thought this hadbeen too much: «thirteen articles on Marx is ridiculous. He was a terri-ble economist and a poor prophet» (P. A. S. to A. M. C. W., 7 July 2009).Nevertheless, one of the most elaborate of these essays expounds andpays generous tribute to Marx’s analyses of simple and extended repro-duction in volume ii of Capital: «Marx’s advance on Quesnay’s Tableaushould win him a place inside the Pantheon» (19, 232). However, although this achievement gets occasional mention in several of theother papers their general thrust is strongly critical. «The labor theoryof value has much mischief to answer for – particularly for how it hasserved to obscure analysis and understanding of inequality» (57, 159).Marx’s «1867 novelties concerning rates of surplus value and exploita-tion represented a sterile detour that renders zero or negative insight into the laws of motion of real-life capitalism and into the forces thatcreate inequality of wealth and income» (54, 5). Bortkiewicz’s «trans-formation» of Marxian values to competitive prices is «logically of theform: ‘Anything’ equals ‘anything else’ multiplied by ‘anything/any-thing else’» (csp, 3, 154, 309). A socialist planner maximizing steady-stateconsumption must eschew Marxian «values» and use «bourgeois prices»(csp, 3, 155, 312). And in his «Foreword» to the Japanese edition of Col-lected Scientific Papers he declared that «No real light of understandinghas ever come from the Marxian novelties of analysis» (csp, 5, 367, 874).Aside from his one genuine contribution, Marx as an economist was buta «minor post-Ricardian» (1, 368).

Samuelson was more than willing to attribute some of the blame forMarx’s analytical failures to Ricardo, «the most overrated of econo-mists» (8, 1507). Samuelson was unimpressed by «the backward and for-ward gropings of a scholar who from his 1814 entrance into microeco-nomics until his 1823 death makes almost no progress in solving hisself-created ambiguities and problematics» (48, 53). Like Marx, Ricardowas an «autodidact», but Marx had the excuse of having been «cut off inhis lifetime from proper criticism and stimulus» (1, 368) quite unlike Ri-cardo, who blandly ignored the cogent criticisms of his friend Malthusand others. Ricardo did get some things gloriously right, notably thetheory of comparative advantage and his highly controversial conclu-sion that a viable invention can reduce wages and national income. Buthis confusion about value theory muddied the analytical waters fordecades. «How could Ricardo and the classicals have missed under-standing how the complication of land is as logically damaging to the

76 Steven G. Medema and Anthony M. C. Watermanltv as the complication of time and interest is?» (66, 35). Moreover,where there are many goods, «there are no ‘natural’ prices definable in-dependently of how consumers choose to spend their incomes» (70,13332). Yet «A deep student of Ricardo will gain insight into the simpletruth that David did not operationally pursue a model in which the labour the-ory of value obtained, even though his twentieth century editor chose notto stress this substantive fact» (48, 55; our italics).

Ricardo’s twentieth-century editor was Piero Sraffa, praised bySamuelson both for his exemplary Ricardo scholarship and for his fa-mous 1960 monograph; but not for the elucidation of Ricardo’s analy-sis in his «Introduction» – which had been extolled by some for its «re-construction of Ricardo’s surplus theory» and for «the analytical role ofthe labor theory of value», thereby underwriting Marx’s critique of cap-italism (Eatwell 1984). Samuelson was dissatisfied with Sraffa’s unwill-ingness to admit either the uselessness of «surplus theory» or the im-possibility of any labor theory of value outside Smith’s «early and rudestate of society», and was tempted to attribute this to ideological bias:«A deep student of Piero Sraffa will not find it irrelevant informationthat he was more prone ideologically to Karl Marx than to Ludwig vonMises» (48, 55). Consequently Samuelson «perceived the need to auditobjectively the claims for David Ricardo generated and augmented by»Sraffa; and «by comparison to dispel the Schumpeterian and other dis-paraging of Smith…» (67, 329). To «the fascinating question whetherclassical political economy does, or can be made to, offer an ‘alternativeparadigm’ to modern mainstream economics» (29, 1415), Samuelson’sanswers were «no» and «no».

4. Samuelson’s Contributions to het

Of the seventy-six papers we have identified and listed as «Samuelson’sPublications in History of Economic Thought», ten are biographical orautobiographical (e.g., 35, 64), seven deal with aspects of Keynes’s contribution to contemporary economics (e.g., 9, 61), six are reviews orshort articles for works of reference (e.g., 6, 70), and four are about historiography (8, 48, 54, 55). A further three are primarily addressed tointernational trade theorists though with significant reference to pastauthorities (e.g., 5), two are replies, two more deal with very recent figures (32, 43), one is an historical survey of wage theory (10) and another criticizes libertarian ideas (7). The remaining forty, most ofwhich are fully developed analyses of the «works of the great masters»from David Hume (1711-1776) to J. B. Clark (1847-1938), may be classifiedchronologically:1. Before Adam Smith – Hume (31), Quesnay (44) and one other,

Paul Anthony Samuelson: Historian of Economic Thought 772. Wealth of Nations and the «Canonical Classical Model» – Smith,

Malthus, Ricardo (29), (28), (60) and one other,3. David Ricardo (70), (3), (4), (49), (53), (74),4. Johann Heinrich von Thünen (43), (47), (75),5. Karl Marx (1), (19), (62) and thirteen others,6. Post-Classical Political Economy – Böhm-Bawerk (59), (72), Fisher

(59), Cassel (58), Wicksell (50), (52), Clark (68) and one other.

4. 1. Before Adam Smith

Though ungrudging in his admiration for David Hume, Samuelson wasconscious of a serious analytical error in Hume’s famous account of the«specie-flow» mechanism. Although international gold flows can in-deed bring about equilibrium, they cannot do so by altering relativeprices of traded goods because of the law of one price. Their effect israther through relative quantities produced and traded. ThoughSamuelson’s «Corrected Version» (31) was first published in 1980 and appeared in csp, 5 (1986), it has yet to affect the leading textbooks (e.g.,Hollander 1987, Blaug 1996, O’Brien 2004).

Samuelson found Hume «more to [his] personal taste» than Quesnay(44, 632); and felt that the explanation of the Tableau by Eltis (1975) andothers did «not satisfy [his] professional conscience» (44, 633). He there-fore constructed a complete model «to indicate why Quesnay’s zig-za-gs never did fulfil a useful purpose in the analysis of his own system».Important features of this model are a classical production functionwhich Quesnay «definitely glimpsed» and a three-sector input-outputtable (44, 636, 639-641). Only a Cornfield-Leontief matrix multiplier cangenerate a temporal process that superficially resembles the zig-zags,but «It seems gratuitous to read this interpretation into Quesnay him-self» (44, 647).

4. 2. Wealth of Nations and the «Canonical Classical Model»

Samuelson considered the canonical classical model (29) to be one ofhis two «deepest contributions to the understanding of the classical eco-nomic system» (67, 330). It is based on an aggregate production functionsimilar to that specified for Quesnay in (44) above, with fixed land anda variable «labor-cum-capital» composite factor subject to diminishingreturns. Labour supply grows when the wage exceeds a ‘Malthusian’subsistence rate, and capital grows comparably when the rate of returnexceeds some zero-net-investment rate3 0. As population and capitalgrow, diminishing returns bring down wages and the profit rate and thesystem converges on the stationary state with output and rent maxi-mized and factor shares determinate. Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo

78 Steven G. Medema and Anthony M. C. Watermanand J. S. Mill shared this model, and also Marx when land scarcity isadded to his model (29, 1415).

The inclusion of Smith among the ‘classical’ economists has beencontested by some (e.g., Hollander 1980; Waterman 1999, 2009) becauseland scarcity and diminishing returns, though evident in Wealth of Na-tions, are not integrated into his analysis nor were recognized in thatwork by his successors. In his «Vindication» of Smith as a theorist (28)Samuelson ignored such objections. In the stationary state, wages, rentsand profits are determined. A non-linear programming model is usedto show that Smith’s «value-added» accounting, and «his pluralistic sup-ply-and-demand analysis in terms of all three components of wages,rents and profits is a valid and valuable anticipation of general equilib-rium modeling» (28, 42). Takashi Negishi (1989, 77-83) has provided asimplified (linear-programming) account of Samuelson’s argument.

«The Classical Classical Fallacy» was identified by Samuelson as thedoctrine that «Fixed capitals are prejudicial to wages and the demand forlabor; circulating capitals … are allegedly favorable to the real wage rateand to the demand for labor» (60, 620). He presented a largely literaryrefutation, supported by a mathematical appendix concentrating on Ri-cardo; and suggested that many «modern commentators» includingHollander, Blaug, Sraffa, Stigler and Hicks had been «brushed by theclassical fallacy» (60, 624-627).

4. 3. David Ricardo

«Ricardo had perceived what he considers faults in Adam Smith. Pos-terity can be glad that this perception tempted Ricardo into economics,though it can be argued convincingly that Smith is mostly the more cor-rect thinker in cases where Ricardo criticizes him» (70, 13331-13332).Samuelson’s generally less than flattering opinion of Ricardo has beennoted in section 3 above. «Like the twentieth-century economists Frie -drich Hayek and Milton Friedman» he «pushed voters and public opin-ion towards libertarian laissez-faire» (70, 13333), no virtue in Samuelson’s‘liberal’ eyes. And because «Ricardo did not coherently understandthe intricacies of his own classical scenario, he never realized how un-attainable was his hankering to have all relative prices determinablepurely by objective technology and cost data» (ibidem).

Samuelson’s extended, two-part «Modern Treatment of the Ricar-dian Economy» (3), (4) dates from 1959 and these are among the earli-est, as they are among the most detailed, of all his papers in het. «DavidRicardo propounded a number of what we today should call linear pro-gramming problems. Except in the simplest cases he was not able togive complete and correct answers» (3, 373).

Paul Anthony Samuelson: Historian of Economic Thought 79In Part i of his «Treatment» (3) Samuelson investigated the pricing of

goods and of labour, and land services, in «Ricardo-like» models, muchof it in terms of simple algebra, arithmetical examples and diagrams.His most important conclusion was that Ricardo’s expedient of «goingto the external margin where labor works with free, no-rent land» toevade the problem of rent was an «illusion». Moreover, «having demol-ished labor as an absolute standard of value we can turn Ricardo upsidedown and find in his simplest, long-run model a ‘land theory of value’»(3, 390, 391). Part i abstracted from time. In Part ii (4) Samuelson con-sidered capital and interest aspects of the pricing process. Elementaryalgebra shows that the labor theory of value is untenable save in the spe-cial case where the time-intensities of industries are exactly equal – asRicardo himself realized; and Samuelson’s equations (17) and (18) havefound their way into the textbooks (e.g., Blaug 1996, 92). A final sectionshows that the «Ricardian land theory of value» can survive the intro-duction of time and capital.

Papers (49) and (53) were written contemporaneously in 1987-1988 andaddress an issue considered eight years later in the appendix to the «Clas-sical Fallacy» (60) noted above: the analytical justification of Ricardo’snotorious chapter «On Machinery» in the third edition of his Principles.In this matter, at any rate «Ricardo was Right!» (53). Simple algebra anddiagrams are sufficient to show that whereas «net» product (rent plus in-terest) is increased by an invention, «gross» product (net product pluswages) will fall if labour is elastic at the subsistence wage-rate, since the in-duced decline in population and wages will dominate. Ricardo’s critics– Wicksell, Kaldor, Stigler, Schumpeter and others – were wrong.

In one of his last het papers (2006) Samuelson collaborated with Er-rko Etula (74), using «the new tools of intertemporal Pareto optimali-ty» to shed light on «early-nineteenth-century dialogue among the Mas-ters» (74, 12). Two possible ‘scenarios’ are offered for a conjectural, asyet undiscovered Ricardo manuscript of 1814.

4. 4. Johann Heinrich von Thünen

Samuelson (43) «for the first time puzzled out the general equilibriumsystem implicit in Thünen’s Natural Wage as the Geometric Mean be-tween workers’ Average Productivity and their subsistence level» (75, 1).Thünen generalized marginal productivity in land to all other factorsand formulated the neoclassical theory of distribution forty years be-fore J. B. Clark (43, 1468). For Samuelson, Thünen «was a genius, a neo-classicist before there was neoclassicism» (47, 1784).

Yet he ended his bicentenary essay, which fully explicated Thünen’s«timeless land-and-labor model, a magnificent edifice» (43, 1469), «with

80 Steven G. Medema and Anthony M. C. Watermana dismissal of his natural wage obsession» (47, 1777). However, RobertDorfman (1986) later showed that there is «buried in Thünen’s worksone formal scenario that correctly achieves his geometric mean formu-la» (47, 1777). Samuelson conceded (47); but he questioned «whetherThünen’s natural wage serves a useful purpose in ethics or welfare pol-icy analysis» (47, 1784).

In the case analyzed by Samuelson (43) capital is produced by labouralone. At Samuelson’s suggestion Erkko Etula (2008) investigated «themore complicated Thünen case where K as well as corn gets producedby K and Labor» (75, 2). As a result, «A cogent Thünen-inspired answercan finally be given to David Ricardo’s fundamental query; ‘how does acompetitive regime answer the puzzle of how society’s total harvestgets divided among (1) the rent to landowner, (2) the wages of laborers,and (3) the interest yield of (vectoral!) K’s’» (ibidem).

4. 5. Karl Marx

Samuelson’s fifty-year-long engagement with Marx has been notedabove. Here it is sufficient to indicate three of the most substantial andcharacteristic essays of his thirteen. 1, his earliest het publication, waspart of a larger study of «Ricardo-like systems». He concluded thatMarx’s economics was «Ricardo without diminishing returns» (1, p. 341).19 is a vast elaboration of (1, part iii) and much more flattering. «Marx’sVolume ii models of simple and extended reproduction have in themthe important germ of general equilibrium, static and dynamic» (19,232) as Samuelson proceeds to show. Of (62) the title, «Isolating Sourcesof Sterility on Marx’s Theoretical Paradigms», speaks for itself.

4. 6. Post-Classical Political Economy

Though Irving Fisher appeared to have disagreed with Böhm-Bawerk’sPositive Theory of Capital, it now seems that Böhm pioneered «the onlyvalid agio theory of the interest rate» which was later «perfected byFisher» and others (59, 223). However, this theory, and indeed «moderncapital theory», contains «a vital normative flaw» (72): there is no nec-essary trade-off in stationary state between the interest rate and con-sumption per capita (72, 305-306). In effect, (72) is a belated tribute toJoan Robinson and Piero Sraffa, whose dissatisfaction with neoclassicalcapital theory led them to this discovery.

«Gustav Cassel did not … anticipate … ‘the theory of revealed prefer-ence’» (58, 515); and most of (58) reports Samuelson’s own contribu-tions. But it ends with a tribute to Cassel’s other claims as a theorist: oncountercyclical policy he was «leagues ahead of 1992 Milton Friedmanor Robert Lucas»; he understood the necessity of interest under social-

Paul Anthony Samuelson: Historian of Economic Thought 81ism; his borrowing of Ricardo’s «purchasing-power parity» was fruitful;he anticipated the Harrod-Domar model in 1918. The article ends witha succinct statement of Samuelson’s historiographic principles: «Thepast is usefully viewed and ordered in terms of the latest cumulativecontents of economic science» (58, 525).

«Of all the neoclassicisists Wicksell is the most humanitarian, theleast conservative» (50, 909) – and was a lifelong, though civil, rival ofthe socially prominent Cassel. (50) supplies a compendious account ofWicksell’s considerable analytical achievements. But in dispute withCassel, «often it is Wicksell who must be judged to have the weakercase» (50, 910). However Samuelson’s «Foreword» to Wicksell’s Fi-nanztheoretische (52) locates him in «the inner circle of the immortals …of Adam Smith, Léon Walras and John Maynard Keynes».

«Clark’s imperishable contribution to … economic theory was hismagisterial paradigm of distribution according to the principle of mar-ginal productivities of labour, land and capital» (68, 1). This essay pres-ents an extended commentary on Clark’s – and in general, neoclassical– distribution theory, acknowledging «pitfalls in heterogeneous capitalgoods» analyzed in (72) above. But an ingenious use of the «Ramsay-Solow-Samuelson model» can show that Clark «is not always wrong»(72, 6).

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the helpful cooperation of Mrs JaniceMurray of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, editor of volumes6 and 7 of Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson now in press.They are grateful to John Singleton for valuable research assistance.

Samuelson’s Publicationsin the History of economic Thought

Republished in Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson (csp), vols1-5:11. «Wages and Interest: A Modern Dissection of Marxian Economic Models» (csp,

1, 29, 341-369), American Economic Review, 47, 6, 1957, 884-912.12. «Wages and Interest: A Modern Dissection of Marxian Economic Models: Re-

ply» (csp, 1, 30, 370-372), American Economic Review, 50, 4, 1960, 719-721.13. «A Modern Treatment of the Ricardian Economy: The Pricing of Goods and of

Labor and Land Services» (csp, 1, 31, 373-407), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 73,1, 1959, 1-35.

14. «A Modern Treatment of the Ricardian Economy: Capital and Interest Aspectsof the Pricing Problem» (csp, 1, 32, 408-422), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 73, 2,1959, 217-231.

15. «The Transfer Problem and Transfer Costs: The Terms of Trade when Impedi-ments are Absent» (csp, 2, 74, 985-1011), Economic Journal, 62, 246, 1952, 278-304.

82 Steven G. Medema and Anthony M. C. Waterman16. Review of H. Myint, Theories of Welfare Economics (csp, 2, 79, 1095-1098), Eco-

nomica, 16, 64, 1949, 371-374.17. «Modern Economic Realities and Individualism» (csp, 2, 106, 1407-1418), The

Texas Quarterly, 6, 1963, 128-139.18. «Economists and the History of Ideas» (csp, 2, 113, 1499-1516), American Economic

Review, 52, 1, 1962, 1-18.19. «A Brief Survey of Post-Keynesian Developments» (csp, 2, 115, 1534-1550), in

Keynes’ General Theory: Reports of Three Decades, ed. by R. Lekachman, New York,St Martin’s Press, 1964, 331-347.

10. «Economic Theory and Wages» (csp, 2, 117, 1557-1587), in The Impact of the Union:Eight Economic Theorists Evaluate the Labor Union Movement, ed. by D. McCordWright, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1951, 312-342.

11. «Marxian Economics as Economics» (csp, 3, 152, 268-275), American Economic Review, 57, 2, 1967, 616-623.

12. «Understanding the Marxian Notion of Exploitation: A Summary of the So-Called Transformation Problem Between Marxian Values and CompetitivePrices» (csp, 3, 153, 276-308), Journal of Economic Literature, 9, 2, 1971, 399-431.

13. «The ‘Transformation’ from Marxian ‘Values’ to Competitive ‘Prices’: A Processof Rejection and Replacement» (csp, 3, 154), Proceedings of the National Academyof Sciences of the United States of America, 67, 1, 1970, 423-425.

14. «An Exact Hume-Ricardo-Marshall Model of International Trade» (csp, 3, 162,356-373), Journal of International Economics, 1, 1, 1971, 1-18.

15. «What Classical and Neoclassical Monetary Theory Really Was» (csp, 3, 176, 529-543), Canadian Journal of Economics, 1, 1, 1968, 1-15.

16. «Irving Fisher and the Theory of Capital» (csp, 3, 184, 653-673), in Ten EconomicStudies in the Tradition of Irving Fisher, ed. by W. Fellner, New York, Wiley, 1967.

17. «The Way of an Economist» (csp, 3, 186, 675-685), in International Economic Rela-tions: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the International Economic Association, ed.by P. A. Samuelson, London, Macmillian, 1969, 1-11.

18. «Economic Growth» (csp, 3, 190, 704-709), in Gendaisekai Hyakka Daijiten, vol. 1,Tokyo, Kodansha, 1971.

19. «Marx as Mathematical Economist: Steady-State and Exponential Growth Equi-librium» (csp, 4, 225, 231-269), in Trade, Stability and Macroeconomic Essays in Honorof Lloyd A. Metzler, ed. by G. Horwich and P. A. Samuelson, New York, AcademicPress, 1974, 269-307.

20. «Optimality of Profit-Including Prices Under Ideal Planning: Marx’s Model»(csp, 4, 226, 270-276), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the UnitedStates of America, 70, 7, 1973, 2109-2111.

21. «The Economics of Marx: An Ecumenical Reply» (csp, 4, 227, 277-283) Journal ofEconomic Literature, 10, no. 1, 1972, 51-57.

22. Samuelson’s «Reply on Marxian Matters» (csp, 4, 228, 284-288), Journal of Eco-nomic Literature, 11, 1, 1973, 64-68.

23. «Insight and Detour in the Theory of Exploitation: Reply to Baumol» (csp, 4,229, 289-297), Journal of Economic Literature, 12, 1, 1974, 62-70.

24. «Rejoinder: Merlin Unclothed, A Final Word» (csp, 4, 230, 298-301), Journal of Economic Literature, 12, 1, 1974, 75-77.

25. Review of V. K. Dmitriev, Economic Essays on Values, Competition, and Utility (csp,4, 231, 302-308), Journal of Economic Literature, 12, 2, 1975, 491-495.

26. «The Art and Science of Macromodels Over 50 Years» (csp, 4, 275, 854-861), in TheBrookings Model: Perspective and Recent Developments, ed. by G. Fromm and L. R.Klein, Amsterdam, North Holland, 1975, 3-10.

Paul Anthony Samuelson: Historian of Economic Thought 8327. «Adam the Immortal» (csp, 4, 276), Pennsylvania Gazette, November 1976, 26-27.28. «A Modern Theorist’s Vindication of Adam Smith» (csp, 5, 342, 622-629), Ameri-

can Economic Review, 67, 1, 1977, 42-49.29. «The Canonical Classical Model of Political Economy» (csp, 5, 340, 598-617), Jour-

nal of Economic Literature, 16, 4, 1978, 1415-1434.30. «Noise and Signal in Debates Among Classical Economists: A Reply» (csp, 5, 341,

618-621), Journal of Economic Literature, 18, 2, 1980, 575-578.31. «A Corrected Version of Hume’s Equilibrating Mechanism for International

Trade» (csp, 5, 315, 397-414), in Flexible Exchange Rates and the Balance of Payments:Essays in Memory of Egon Sohmen, ed. by J. S. Chipman and Ch. P. Kindleberger,Amsterdam, North Holland, 1980, 141-158.

32. «Bergsonian Welfare Economics» (csp, 5, 293, 3-46), in Economic Welfare and theEconomics of Soviet Socialism: Essays in Honor of Abram Bergsom, ed. by S. Rose-fielde, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, 223-266.

33. «A Chapter in the History of Ramsey’s Optimal Feasible Taxation and OptimalPublic Utility Prices» (csp, 5, 296, 76-100), in Economic Essays in Honor of Jørgen H.Gelting, ed. by S. Andersen, K. Larsen, P. Norregaard Rusmussen and J. Vibe-Pe -dersen, Copenhagen, Danish Economic Association, 1982, 157-181.

34. «Paul Douglas’s Measurement of Production Functions and Marginal Produc-tivities» (csp, 5, 302, 203-219), Journal of Political Economy, 87, 5, 1979, 923-939.

35. «Schumpeter as an Economic Theorist» (csp, 5, 309, 301-327), in SchumpeterianEconomics, ed. by H. Frisch, London, Praeger, 1982, 1-27.

36. «1983: Marx, Keynes and Schumpeter» (csp, 5, 304, 261-274), Eastern Economic Jour-nal, 9, 3, 1983, 166-180.

37. «The Keynes Centenary» (csp, 5, 305, 275-278), The Economist, 25 June 1983, 19-21.38. «The House that Keynes Built» (csp, 5, 306, 279-282), New York Times, 29 May 1983.39. «Succumbing to Keynesianism» (csp, 5, 307, 283-290), Challenge, 27, 1985, 4-11.40. «Comment [on Axel Leijonhufvud’s ‘What Would Keynes Have Thought of Ra-

tional Expectations?’]» (csp, 5, 308, 291-300), in Keynes and the Modern World, ed.by D. Worswick and J. Trevithick, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983,212-221.

41. «The Normative and Positivistic Inferiority of Marx’s Values Paradigm» (csp, 5,312, 351-358), Southern Economic Journal, 49, 1, 1982, 11-18.

42. «Marx Without Matrices: Understanding the Rate of Profit» (csp, 5, 313, 359-374),in Marxism, Central Planning, and the Soviet Economy: Economic Essays in Honor ofAlexander Erlich, ed. by P. Desai, Cambridge (ma), The mit Press, 1983, 3-18.

43. «Thünen at Two Hundred» (csp, 5, 339, 575-597), Journal of Economic Literature, 21,4, 1983, 1468-1488.

44. «Quesnay’s ‘Tableau Economique’ as a Theorist would Formulate it Today»(csp, 5, 343, 630-663), in Classical and Marxian Political Economy: Essays in Honor ofRonald L. Meek, ed. by I. Bradley and M. Howard, New York, St. Martin’s Press,1982, 45-78.

45. «Land and the Rate of Interest» (csp, 5, 344, 664-682), in Theory for Economic Effi-ciency: Essays in Honor of Abba P. Lerner, ed. by H. I. Greenfield, A. M. Levenson,W. Hamovitch and E. Rotwein, Cambridge (ma), The mit Press, 1979, 167-185.

46. «Correcting the Ricardo Error Spotted in Harry Johnson’s Maiden Paper» (csp,5, 345, 683-696), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 91, 4, 1977, 519-530.

To be republished in csp, vols 6-7, not yet available:47. «Yes to Robert Dorfman’s Vindication of Thünen’s Natural-Wage Derivation»,

Journal of Economic Literature, 24, 4, 1986, 1777-1785.

84 Steven G. Medema and Anthony M. C. Waterman48. «Out of the Closet: A Program for the Whig History of Economic Science», His-

tory of Economics Society Bulletin, 9, 1, 1987, 51-60.49. «Mathematical Vindication of Ricardo on Machinery» Journal of Political Econo-

my, 96, 2, 1988, 274-282.50. «Wicksell and Neoclassical Economics», in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Eco-

nomics, ed. by J. Eatwell, M. Milgate and P. Newman, London, Macmillan, 1987,908-910.

51. «How Economics Has Changed», Journal of Economic Education, 18, 2, 1987, 107-110.52. «Wicksells Werk und Persönlichkeit – Eine kritische Analyse in Moderner Sicht»,

in Knut Wicksell: Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen nebst Darstellung und Kritik desSteuerwesens Schwedens, Klassiker der Nationalökonomie, Düsseldorf, Verlag Wirt-schaft und Finanzen GmbH, 1988, 25-36.

53. «Ricardo was Right!», Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 91, 1, 1989, 47-62.54. «Conversations with my History-of-Economics Critics», in Economics, Culture and

Education: Essays in Honour of Mark Blaug, ed. by G. K. Shaw, Aldershot (uk), Ed-ward Elgar, 1991, 3-13.

55. with D. Patinkin and M. Blaug, «On the Historiography of Economics: A Cor-respondence», Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 13, 2, 1991, 144-158.

56. «The Fitness Maximized by the Canonical Classical Model: A Theme FromHouthakker and R. A. Fisher», in Aggregation, Consumption and Trade: Essays inHonor of H.S. Houthakker, ed. by L. Philips and L. D. Taylor, Boston, Kluwer, 1992,9-20.

57. «Marx on Rent: A Failure to Transform Correctly», Journal of the History of Eco-nomic Thought, 14, 2, 1992, 143-167.

58. «Gustav Cassel’s Scientific Innovations: Claims and Realities», History of PoliticalEconomy, 18, 3, 1993, 515-527.

59. «Two Classics: Böhm-Bawerk’s Positive Theory and Fisher’s Rate of Interestthrough Modern Prisms», Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 16, 2, 1994,202-228.

60. «The Classical Classical Fallacy», Journal of Economic Literature, 32, 2, 1994, 620-639.

61. «Who Innovated the Keynesian Revolution?», in Economics, Econometrics and thelink: Essays in Honor of Lawrence R. Klein, ed. by M. Dutta, Amsterdam, NorthHolland, 1995, 3-19.

62. «Isolating Sources of Sterility in Marx’s Theoretical Paradigms», in Essays in Honour of Geoff Harcourt, vol. 1, ed. by Ph. Arestis, G. Palma and M. Sawyer, Lon-don, Routledge, 1996, 187-198.

63. «Credo of a Lucky Textbook Author», Journal of Economic Perspectives, 11, 2, 1997,153-160.

64. «How Foundations Came to Be», Journal of Economic Literature, 36, 3, 1998, 1375-1386.

65. «Requiem for the Classic Tarshis Textbook That First Brought Keynes to Intro-ductory Economics», in Keynesianism and the Keynesian Revolution in America: AMemorial Volume in Honour of Lorie Tarshis, ed. by O. F. Hamouda and B. B. Price,Cheltenham (uk), Edward Elgar, 1998, 53-58.

66. «Land», in The Elgar Companion to Classical Economics, vol. 2, ed. by H. D. Kurzand N. Salvadori, Cheltenham (uk), Edward Elgar, 1998, 27-36.

67. «Samuelson, Paul Anthony, as an Interpreter of the Classical Economists», in TheElgar Companion to Classical Economics, vol. 2, ed. by H. D. Kurz and N. Salvadori,Cheltenham (uk), Edward Elgar, 1998, 329-333.

Paul Anthony Samuelson: Historian of Economic Thought 8568. «John Bates Clark: America’s First Great Theorist», in John Bates Clark, the Distri-

bution of Wealth, Klassiker der Nationalökonomie, Düsseldorf, Verlag Wirtschaftund Finanzen GmbH, 1999, 55-72.

69. «A Quintessential (Ahistorical) Tableau Économique: to Sum up Pre- and Post-Smith Classical Paradigms», in Economics Broadly Considered: Essays in Honor ofWarren J. Samuels, ed. by J. E. Biddle, J. B. Davis and S. G, Medema, London,Routledge, 2001, 47-60.

70. «Ricardo, David (1772-1823)», in International Encyclopedia of Social and BehavioralSciences, ed. by N. J. Smelser and P. B. Baltes, New York, Elsevier, 2001, 13330-13334.

71. «Economic History and Mainstream Economic Analysis», Rivista di Storia Eco-nomica, 17, 2, 2001, 271-277.

72. «A Modern Post-Mortem on Böhm’s Capital Theory: Its Vital Normative FlawShared by Pre-Sraffian Mainstream Capital Theory», Journal of the History of Eco-nomic Thought, 23, 3, 2001, 301-317.

73. «Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments of Mainstream Econo-mistsSupporting Gobalization», Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18, 3, 2004, 135-146.

74. with Erkko M. Etula, «Two Alternative Hypothetical ‘Lost’ 1814 Ricardo Manu-scripts: New-Century Bearings», History of Political Economy, 38, 1, 2006, 1-14.

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76. «The Schumpeterian Circle at Harvard: 1932-50», Journal of Evolutionary Econom-ics, forthcoming.

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CONTENTS

papersErdem Ozgur, Charles Babbage: an inadvertent development econo-

mist 11Steven Kates, Influencing Keynes: the intellectual origins of the Gen-

eral Theory 33

paul a. samuelson (1915-2009):theorist, historian and intellectual

Steven G. Medema, Anthony M. C. Waterman, Paul AnthonySamuelson: historian of economic thought 67

Andrew Farrant, Edward McPhail, No good deed goes unpun-ished? Revisiting the Hayek-Samuelson exchange over Hayek’s al-leged ‘inevitability’ thesis 87

Gavin Kennedy, Paul Samuelson and the invention of the moderneconomics of the Invisible Hand 105

Pedro Garcia Duarte, Beyond Samuelson’s chapter on Ramsey 121Craig Freedman, The Chicago School. A conversation with Paul

Samuelson 161Giuseppe Bertola, Samuelson and switching of techniques 187

reviews articleDuccio Cavalieri, Neoliberalism under debate 199Sasan Fayazmanesh, A sentimental journey through Marxian eco-

nomics 209

book reviewsMarion Fourcade, Economists and Societies. Discipline and Profes-

sion in the United States, Britain, & France, 1890s to 1990s (Bianchi) 219Murray Milgate and Shannon C. Stimson, After Adam Smith:

A Century of Transformation in Politics and Political Economy(Rassekh) 223

R. Scazzieri, A. Sen and S. Zamagni (eds), Markets, Money and Cap-ital. Hicksian Economics for the Twenty-first Century (Di Matteo) 226

Cyrille Ferraton, ‘Les valeurs guident et accompagnent notre re-cherche’: L’institutionnalisme de Myrdal (Dostaler) 232

Tony Aspromourgos, The Science of Wealth -Adam Smith and theFraming of Political Economy (Vaggi) 234

Michael B. Gill, The British Moralists on Human Nature and theBirth of Secular Ethics (Drakopoulou Dodd) 236

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Papers: Erdem Ozgur, Charles Babbage: an in-advertent development economist · Steven Kates,Influencing Keynes: the intellectual origins of theGeneral Theory · Paul A. Samuelson (1915-2009): theorist, historian and intellectual:Steven G. Medema, Anthony M. C. Water-man, Paul Anthony Samuelson: historian of eco-nomic thought · Andrew Farrant, EdwardMcPhail, No good deed goes unpunished? Revisit-ing the Hayek-Samuelson exchange over Hayek’s alleged ‘inevitability’ thesis · Gavin Kennedy,Paul Samuelson and the invention of the moderneconomics of the Invisible Hand · Pedro GarciaDuarte, Beyond Samuelson’s chapter on Ramsey ·Craig Freedman, The Chicago School. A conver-sation with Paul Samuelson · Giuseppe Bertola,Samuelson and switching of techniques · ReviewsArticles: Duccio Cavalieri, Neoliberalism under debate · Sasan Fayazmanesh, A sentimen-tal journey through Marxian economics · Book Reviews.