The butcher and the storyteller: the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize and the role of mathematics in economic theory

Written with Aurélien Saïdi (draft version with more footnotes and full references here) The 2018 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic … More

Understanding the development of contemporary economics through major controversies : syllabus, lecture summaries and reflections

This Spring I taught a history of recent economics course to undergraduate students majoring in mathematics and economics. The syllabus … More

Edit: there is now a published paper based on this blog post. Published version here; draft here. Initially published on … More

Edit: there is now a published paper based on this blog post. Published version here; draft here Why the computerization … More

Edit: there is now a published paper based on this blog post. Published version here; draft here “The rise of … More

Edit: there is now a published paper based on this blog post. Published version here; draft here On Hardware, there’s … More

Initially posted on the INET blog. At the end of World War II, the American Economic Association began seeking a … More

The proposal In January 1953, Oskar Morgentern wrote Alfred Cowles to suggest a change in the Constitution of the Econometric Society … More

It seems that economists have a serious problem with theory lately. The pushback against rational expectations is growing, Richard Thaler … More

Excerpt from this paper. Other episodes here and here. As 1910 was nearing its end, Davis Dewey, who had just … More