In 1931 Ragnar Frisch became professor at the University of Oslo. By way of his research, a new study programme and new staff he created the ”Oslo School”, characterised by mathematical modelling, econometrics, economic planning and scepticism towards the market economy. Consequently,...

Fifty years ago the Norwegian economist, Leif Johansen, gave us what is now recognised as the first CGE model. While Johansen was first, he is not the father of the whole field. CGE modelling in different styles sprang largely independently from several sources. This paper describes how...

The proof of the existence of the Standard commodity contained in Sraffa's book (section 37) has been debated recently. Lippi (2008) has argued that the algorithm in section 37 of Sraffa’s book is not precisely stated and does not need to converge to the desired eigenvalue and eigenvector. In...

Theoretical study identifying one modality with conditions necesary for the financial stabilization of an inherently unstable system; and 5040 other unstable dynamic modes. It draws on knowledge made available by the academic field of Control Engineering.

The claim in this paper is that Sraffa employed a rigorous logic of mathematical reasoning in his book, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (PCC), in such a way that the existence proofs were constructive. This is the kind of mathematics that was prevalent at the beginning of the...

Trygve Haavelmo spent the academic year 1938/39 at the University of Aarhus as a teacher in statistics. He would immediately after his Aarhus stay leave for the United States, where he completed The Probability Approach in Econometrics (1944) and later worked at the Cowles Commission before...

The theorem proving the existence of general equilibrium in a competitive economy, which necessarily involved specifying the conditions under which such an equilibrium would exist, is an extraordinary achievement of twentieth-century economics. The discovery is commonly attributed to a paper by...

Alan S. Milward was an economic historian who developed an implicit theory of historical change. His interpretation which was neither liberal nor Marxist posited that social, political, and economic change, for it to be sustainable, had to be a gradual process rather than one resulting from a...

Alan S. Milward was an economic historian who developed an implicit theory of historical change. His interpretation which was neither liberal nor Marxist posited that social, political, and economic change, for it to be sustainable, had to be a gradual process rather than one resulting from a...

As a case study on the status of women in the economics profession, this article analyzes the fascinating career of Anne P. Carter. Prior to 1966 there were no women in the economics faculty at Harvard. In 1966 Carter became the first assistant professor of the Harvard Economics Department but,...