From exploratory modeling to technical expertise
- Author(s)
- Verena Halsmayer
- Abstract
Combining concrete policy-oriented modeling strategies of World War II with what was received as traditional neoclassical theory, in 1956 Robert Solow constructed a simple, clean, and smooth-functioning “design” model that served many different purposes. As a working object, it enabled experimentation with utopian long-run equilibrium growth. As an instrument of measurement, it was applied to time-series data. As a prototype, it was supposed to feed into larger-scale econometric models that were, in turn, thought of as technologies for policy advice. Used as a teaching device, Solow’s design became a medium of “spreading the technique” and one of the symbols for neoclassical macroeconomics that soon became associated with MIT.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of History
- Journal
- History of Political Economy
- Volume
- 46
- Pages
- 229-251
- No. of pages
- 23
- ISSN
- 0018-2702
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-2716181
- Publication date
- 2014
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 601022 Contemporary history, 502027 Political economy
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- History, Economics and Econometrics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/7a2381db-090f-48f8-a5a1-2e798eee6958