1st Edition
Metaphors in the History of Economic Thought Crises, Business Cycles and Equilibrium
Metaphors in the History of Economic Thought: Crises, Business Cycles and Equilibrium explores the evolution of economic theorizing through the lens of metaphors. The edited volume sheds light on metaphors which have been used by a range of key thinkers and schools of thought to describe economic crises, business cycles and economic equilibrium.
Structured in three parts, the book examines an array of metaphors ranging from mechanics, waves, storms, medicine and beyond. The international panel of contributors focuses primarily on economic literature up to the Second World War, knowing again that the use of metaphors in economic work has seen a resurgence since the 1980s.
This work will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in the history of economic thought, and economics and language.
Introduction
Roberto Baranzini and Daniele Besomi
Pt. I: Crises
1. Economic crises in nineteenth century Italy: a cultural analysis
Monika Poettinger
2. Clément Juglar’s epistemic use of metaphors
Roberto Baranzini and Daniele Besomi
3. Riders on the Storm: W. Stanley Jevons, Meteorology and the Analysis of ‘Commercial Fluctuations’
Michael V. White
Pt. II: Business cycles
4. Stitching Things Together. Marshall on the economy as an “organic whole”
Harro Maas
5. Differentiation, integration, and the great variety of organisms: biological origins of Werner Sombart’s business cycle theory
Marius Kuster
6. Biological, Medical and Physical Metaphors in Germán Bernácer’s Theory of Business Cycles (1916–1936)
Juan A. Zabalza
7. The nature of monetary disturbances in Austrian and Swedish business cycle theories
Bert Tieben
8. How economics failed to understand crises. Constitutive metaphors in business cycle analysis, from Frisch to Real Business Cycles
Francisco Louçã
Pt. III: Equilibrium
9. The pendulum and equilibrium: A survey
Daniele Besomi and Sonya Marie Scott
10. Statistical equilibrium in early 20th century Italian economics
Gianfranco Tusset
Biography
Roberto Baranzini is a professor in economics and in the history and philosophy of economics at the Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His research covers the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, focusing on the work of Léon Walras and on the Ecole de Lausanne until the 1960s.
Daniele Besomi is senior research fellow at the Centre Walras-Pareto, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His research centres on the history of business cycles and crises theories, and his writings include some on the key metaphors used frequently by writers on the subjects.
