Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 06/09/2025Disequilibrium perhaps had its heyday In the 70s/80s, for example, Frank Hahn looked at conjectural equilibria & found “if it will prove possible to make conjectures less arbitrary it will have to be done in a Marshallian way. This is not a conclusion congenial to a general equilibrium man.” 251
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 12/07/2025And what you rarely see is some sort of balance sheet approach, which might be a lot more informative. Alvin Hansen suggested a current and capital account approach to the US budget post the Great Depression, not that it came to anything! 010
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 24/05/2025This week’s interesting titles! Leigh’s short history is a great intro: putting the econ into an historical, social, institutional, & technological setting. Whereas Decolonizing Econ seeks to challenge our whole Eurocentric approach. They have an element of a return to political economy in common. 1154
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 30/03/2025Back where we had our wedding reception 40 years ago… changed a bit since!! 010
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 15/03/2025Looking forward to getting further into this book by @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social Encouraged by the introduction including “What does ‘better’ mean?” (NB in 1957 Hansen would have already included nutrition, health, education, recreation…) and “The fundamental issue is the definition of value”. 3375
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 09/03/2025As students we spend Sunday reading the two main broadsheets, The Observer & Sunday Times over a long shared lunch, this picture must have been from 1977-8. 170
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 17/01/2025Looking forward to the contents of this delivery for tea later… the Chelsea buns come with an extra pot of sticky sauce. #Fitzbillies 010
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 23/11/2024No.8 (it seems our instigator has dropped out already, but one or two more old classics won’t go amiss) 110
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 17/11/2024Not sure how we’re doing the sequence, as per comment above hashtag? Or thread…?- anyhow No.2 100
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 03/10/2024Silk Roads at the British Museum is a fascinating exposition of the interaction of trade, culture, technology, and thought: from East to West. Very busy having only just opened, so must return later. Just as uplifting was the reopened old British Library Reading Room, such a great room for working! 120
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 16/08/2024As an appetizer for the weekend, or just a timeline break, a vista from near Ashover Rock in Derbyshire earlier this week. The annual Ashover Show is quite an event too! 020
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 09/08/2024I can offer you a southern one near here, obviously not quite the same grimness! But nonetheless some still relying on horse power. 150
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 09/08/2024You could always go further northeast, this is near Barnsley… but no canal! 150
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 23/07/2024Here is a prescient gem from 1930 on economic self-sufficiency 110
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 23/07/2024A very 30s dust jacket for this collection of reprinted articles from 1925-33. A great introduction and a few gems! 110
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 19/07/2024TE Gregory, now largely forgotten, was the archetypal defender of the gold standard well past its expiry date. However his 1933 comments on the aims of monetary policy, not simply as price stability but as a broader stability have perhaps endured, even if overly optimistic in a preKeynesian age. 010
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 19/07/2024In 1933 TE Gregory published a collection of earlier articles as a book, quite common in the period. Thus the introduction is of interest. This is quite a comment on the interaction of economics and economic history. Here he credits his links with Lilian Knowles, Foxwell & Cannan 010
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 09/07/2024Robert Cord’s next volume in the Palgrave Companion series is now out, this time on the development of Harvard Economics. 110
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 12/02/2024Following this up with a related, and equally fascinating, analysis by Claire Priest of the foundation of American capitalism in property rights (including slaves) and the development of credit. 010
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 07/02/2024Also Hansen’s 1947 AER article on cost functions has some references to empirical work including discussions & questionnaires by RA Lester, work by the NBER and a Congressional Committee under Ed Mason… 120
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 17/01/2024Finding “The Wealth of a Nation” by Geoffrey Hodgson to be a fascinating and insightful read. A much wider political-economic history leading up to the Industrial Revolution. Seems like I keep coming across enlightening aspects of institutionalist approaches at the moment! 120
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 23/12/2023Keynes on the Book Trade in 1927 and why books were not too dear then (and perhaps now?) open.substack.com/pub/robertbi... 010
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 24/11/2023As something of an interlude, a tale about TE Gregory’s first wife, and a tenuous Berkshire connection… open.substack.com/pub/robertbi... 020
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 16/11/2023 Very pleased to repost this from that other site… And a link to the home page on the publisher’s site: link.springer.com/book/10.1007... 110
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 27/10/2023Here’s a later one from the NIESR Review that should be easily accessible 000
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 14/10/2023DH Robertson on the feelings of revisiting the General Theory debates in response to Hansen’s Guide to Keynes. And some comments on Keynesianism. 010
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 10/10/2023So with some trepidation, mixed with a little relief, I clicked the final submit button. Proofs done on the Hansen book. I fully expect to wake up one morning remembering what I must have forgotten etc. I managed to get a reference to Thomas Hart Benton into the introduction too. 100
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 30/09/2023Hansen proofs have finally arrived! That gives a sense of reality, but nonetheless still scary to turn them round in time! In the meantime here’s the cover and contents to whet your appetite🤞… 022
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 22/09/2023A very short note on the “jazz economics” of the late 1920s. robertbigg.substack.com/p/jazz-econo... (Experimenting on Substack….) 010
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 23/08/2023Arthur Marget’s comments on method at the 1928 Harris Foundation Round Tables, with an endorsement from the LSE’s TE Gregory. The 1928 sessions covered Foreign Investments, including contributions from Cassel, Gregory, and Kuczynski. The round table organising committee included Marget & Viner. 000
Robert Bigg @robertbigg.bsky.social · 23/08/2023Wonderful anecdote from Jacob Viner about Pigou at the 1928 Harris Foundation round tables: “I am not in the habit of reading the books I myself have written.” 000